
i 



THE 

COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 

OF JOHN GREENLEAF 

WHITTIER 



J>tiiIimt'jEt €atnlirtlige <£tiition 







HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



C \1(\!\2 






COPYRIGHT, 1S4S, 1850, lSS3, 1S56, lSS7, 1S60, 1S63, 1S66, 1S67, 1S6S, 1870, 1872, 1S74, 1S75, 1S76, 1S78, 

18S1, 1SS3, 18S4, :SS6, iSSS, 1890, AND 189I, BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, TICKNOR 

4- FIELDS, JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

COPYRIGHT, 1S92, BY GEORGE F. BAGLEY AND GEORGE W. CATE, EXECUTORS AND TRUSTEES 

COPYRIGHT, 1S94, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN * CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



tJTfie JElibereilie H^vtss 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 



b O. PUBLIC l^IBBABY 



DISTRICT OP'OOtUMHCtf PROPBBT7 
'TIB A IMfWigBJaBP FBOM. BXJBUO UMBtJkMM 



iAFR PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

IT- -^- 

\* J[n Whittier supervised the preparation of a collective edition of his 

i'lr wai J. was published in seven volumes, under the title of the Riverside 

t'o-, . .form in general plan with the Riverside Edition of Longfellow's writ- 

ii,s. For this edition the poet furnished introductions and head-notes, and in 

■.-"'• cases revised the text. He decided which of his earlier poems to discard 

altogether, wliich to insert in an appendix, and which to include in the body of his 

poetry. He also determined on a classification of his poems, and divided the four 

^olumes containing them into definite subdivisions, nine in all besides a small group 

C^f his sister's poems which he wished preserved with his own. Thus, very near the 

^nd of his life, he formed what was a definitive edition of his writings. He con- 

-4inued, however, to send out poems occasionally in the remaining four years, and 

these were gathered after his death into a small volume entitled " At Sundown." 

jjThis little book was indeed the extension of one which he had issued privately in 

Sthe last year of his life. 

The present Cambridge Edition is based upon the original Riverside Edition. 
It contains the same text in the same topical arrangement, together with " At 
D Sundown " and a few poems which were gleaned after Mr. Whittier's death and 
^ included in the authorized biography. The head-notes and the notes at the end of 
^ the volume are for the most part copies or abridgments of those used in the River- 
q side Edition, but a few have been added containing facts brought to light after Mr. 
Whittier's death. These are distinguished by being inclosed in brackets [ ]. As 
^ in the Cambridge Edition of LongfelloAv's Complete Works, a biographical sketch 
5 has been provided. The introduction which follows the sketch is that prepared by 
H Mr. Whittier for the Riverside Edition. 
> Boston, 4 Park Street, September 1, 1894. 
Q 






i 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . 

INTRODUCTION . . 

PROEil 

NARRATIVE 
POEMS. 



AND LEGENDARY 



The Vaudois Teacher 

The Female Martyr . 

Extract from "A New England 

Legend " 

The J)emon of the Study . 
The Fountain .... 
Pentucket .... 
The Norsemen .... 
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis 

St. John 

The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon 

The Exiles 

The Knight of St. John . 
Cassandra Southwick 
The New Wife and the Old 
The Bridal of Pennacook 
I. The Merrimac . 
11. The Bashaba 

III. The Daughter. 

IV. The Wedding 
V. The Neay Home 

VI. At Pennacook 
VII. The Departure 
VIII. Song of Indian Women 
Barclay of Ury . 
The Angels of Buena Vista 
The Legend of St. Mark . 

Kathleen 

The Well of Loch Maree 
The Chapel of the Hermits 

Tauler 

The Hermit of the Thebatd 
Maud Muller .... 
Mary Garvin .... 
The Ranger .... 
The Garrison of Cape Ann . 
The Gift of Tritemius 
Skipper Ireson's Ride 
The Sycamores 
The Pipes at Lucknow . 
Telling the Bees . 



FAOB 

The Swan Song of Parson Avery 60 
The Double - Headed Snake of 

Newbury 61 

Mabel Martin : A Harvest Idyl 62 

Proem 62 

I. The River Valley . 63 

II. The Husking ... 63 

III. The Witch's Daughter. 64 

IV. The Champion ... 65 
V. In the Shadow ... 65 

VI. The Betrothal ... 66 

The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall 67 

The Red River Voyageur . . 69 

The Preacher .... 69 

The Truce of Piscataqua . . 74 

My Playmate .... 76 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision . . 77 

Amy Wentavorth. ... 79 

The Countess 81 

Among the Hills ... 83 

Prelude 84 

Among the Hills ... 85 

The Dole of Jarl Thorkell . 89 

The Two Rabbins ... 91 

Norembega 92 

Miriam 93 

Nauhaught, the Deacon . . 99 

The Sisters 100 

Marguerite 101 

The Robin. 102 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim . . 103 

Prelude 103 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim . 103 

King Volmer and Elsie ^ . . 112 

The Three Bells .... 114 

John Underhill .... 115 

Conductor Bradley . . . 117 

The Witch of Wenham . . 117 

King Solomon and the Ants . 120 

In the "Old South" . . . 121 

The Henchman 121 

The Dead Feast of tee Kol- 

Folk 122 

The Khan's Devil ... 123 

The King's Missive .... 124 

Valuation 126 

Rabbi Ishmael 126 

The Rock-Tomb of Bradore . 127 



CONTENTS 



The Bay of Seven Islands . . 127 
The Wishing Bridge . . . 130 
How the Women went from Dover 130 
St. Gregory's Guest . . . 132 
BiRCHBROOK Mill .... 133 
134 
135 
135 
136 
137 
138 



Quill 



The Two Elizabeths . 

Requital 

The Homestead .... 
How the Robin came . 
Banished from Massachusetts 
The Brown Dwarf of Rugen 

POEMS OF NATURE. 
The Frost Spirit 
The Merrimac 
Hampton Beach 
A Dream of Summer 
The Lakeside . 
Autumn Thoughts 
On Receiving an Eagle's 

from Lake Superior . 
April .... 
Pictures .... 
Summer by the Lakeside 
The Fruit-Gift 
Flowers in Winter . 
The Mayflom'ers . 
The Last Walk in Autumn 
The First Flowers 
The Old Burying-Ground 
The Palm-Tree 
The River Path .... 
Mountain Pictures . 

I. Franconia from the Pemi 

GEWASSET 
II. MONADNOCK FROM WaCHXTSET 

The Vanishers .... 
The Pageant . 
The Pressed Gentian 
A Mystery 
A Sea Dream 
Hazel Blossoms 
Sunset on the Bearcamp . 
The Seeking of the Waterfall 
JThe Trailing Arbutus 
St. Martin's Summer . 
Storm on Lake Asquam 
A Summer Pilgrimage 
Sweet Fern 
The Wood Giant . 
A Day .... 



PERSONAL POEMS. 



A Lament 

To the Memory of Charles 
Storrs 



141 
141 
142 
143 
144 
144 

144 
145 
146 
147 
148 
148 
149 
150 
153 
153 
155 
155 
156 

156 
156 
157 
158 
159 
159 
160 
161 
161 
162 
164 
164 
165 
165 
166 
167 
168 



169 



OF 



Lines on the Death of S. Oliver 
TORREY 

To , with a Copy of Wool- 
man's Journal .... 

Leggett's Monument 

To a Friend, on her Return 
from Europe 

Lucy Hooper . 

Follen .... 

To J. P 

Chalkley Hall . 

Gone 

To RONGE 

Channing 

To my Friend on the Death 

his Sister . 
Daniel Wheeler 
To Fredrika Bremer 
To Avis Keene. 
The Hill-Top 
Elliott .... 
^HABOD .... 
The Lost Occasion . 
Wordsworth 
To : Lines written after 

Summer Day's Excursion . 
In Peace 
Benedicite 

Kossuth .... 
To my Old Schoolmaster 
The Cross ... 
The Hero .... 
Rantoul .... 
William Forster 
To Charles Sumner . 

Burns 

To George B. Cheever 

To James T. Fields 

The Memory of Burns 

In Remembrance of Joseph 

Sturge 

Brown of Ossawatomie . 
Naples .... 
A Memorial .... 
Bryant on his Birthday 
Thomas Starr King . 
Lines on a Fly-Leaf 
George L. Stearns 
Garibaldi .... 
To Lydia Maria Child 
The Singer 
How Mary Grew . 
Sumner .... 

Thiers 

Fitz-Greene Halleck . 
William Francis Bartlett 



CONTENTS 



Vll 



Bayard Taylor . . . .212 

Our Altocrat .... 213 

Within the Gate .... 213 

In Memory: James T. Fields . 214 

Wilson 215 

The Poet and the Children . 215 

A Welcome to Lowell . . . 216 

An Artist of the Beautiful . 216 

MULFORD . . . . . . 217 

To A Cape Ann Schooner . . 217 

Samuel J. Tilden .... 217 

OCCASIONAL POEMS. 

Eva 218 

A Lay of Old Time . . .218 

A Song of Harvest . . . 219 

Kenoza Lake 219 

PoR AN Autumn Festival . . 220 

The Quaker Alumni . . . 220 

■OvR River 224 

Bevisited 225 

"The Laurels" .... 226 
June on the Mekrimac . . . 226 
Hymn for the Opening of Thomas 
Starr King's House of Wor- 
ship 227 

Hymn for the House of Worship 
at Georgetown, erected in 

Memory of a Mother . . 228 

A Spiritual Manifestation . 228 

Chicago 230 

Kinsman 231 

The Golden Wedding of Long- 

AVOOD 231 

Hymn for the Opening of Ply- 
mouth Church, St. Paul, Min- 
nesota 232 

Lexington 232 

The Library 233 

" I WAS A Stranger, and Ye took 

Me in" 233 

Centennial Hymn . . . 234 

At School-Close .... 234 

Hymn of the Children . . 235 

The Landmarks .... 236 

Garden 237 

A Greeting 237 

Godspeed 238 

Winter Roses 238 

The Reunion .... 239 

Norumbega Hall .... 239 

The Bartholdi Statue . . 240 

One of the Signers . . . 240 

THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 

Prelude 242 

The Tent on the Beach . . 242 



The Wreck of Rivermouth . 245 

The Grave by the Lake . . 247 

The Brother of Mercy . . 250 

The Changeling .... 251 

The Maids of Attitash . . 253 

Kallundborg Church . . . 255 

The Cable Hymn .... 256 

The Dead Ship of Harpswell . 257 

The Palatine .... 258 

Abraham Davenport . . . 259 

The Worship of Nature . . 261 

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS. 

To William Lloyd Garrison . 262 

Toussaint L'Ouverture . . 262 
The Slave-Ships . . . .265 

Expostulation .... 267 
Hymn: " O Thou, whose Presence 

WENT before" .... 268 

The Yankee Girl ... 269 
The Hunters of Men . . .270 

Stanzas for the Times . . 271 
Clerical Oppressors . . .272 

A Summons 272 

To the Memory of Thomas Ship- 
ley 274 

The Moral Warfare . . . 275 

RiTNER 275 

The Pastoral Letter . . 276 
Hymn: "0 Holy Father! Just 

AND True " 278 

The Farewell of a Virginia 

Slave Mother .... 278 

Pennsylvania Hall . . . 279 

The New Year .... 281 

The Relic 283 

The World's Convention . . 284 

Massachusetts to Virginia . . 286 

The Christian Slave . . . 288 

The Sentence of John L. Brown 289 

Texas : Voice of New England . 291 

To Faneuil Hall .... 292 

To Massachusetts .... 292 

New Hampshire .... 293 

The Pine-Tree 293 

To A Southern Statesman . 294 

At Washington .... 295 

The Branded Hand ... 296 
The Freed Islands . . . .298 

A Letter 298 

Lines from a Letter to a Young 

Clerical Friend .... 300 

Daniel Neall .... 300 

Song of Slaves in the Desert . 301 

To Delaware .... 301 

York TOWN 302 

Randolph of Roanoke . . 303 



CONTENTS 



The Lost Statesman 


;504 


Laus Deo ! . . . . 


345 


The Slaves of Martinique 


305 


Hymn for the Celebration 




The Curse of the Charter- 




OF Emancipation at New- 




Breakers 


306 


buryport 


346 


P^an 


308 


After the War. 




The Crisis 


308 


The Peace Autumn 


346 


Lines on the Portrait of a Cele- 




To THE Thirty-Ninth Con- 




brated Publisher . 


310 


gress 


347 


Derne 


311 


The Hive at Gettysburg . 


348 


A Sabbath Scene 


312 


Howard at Atlanta 


348 


In the Evil Days .... 


313 


The Emancipation Group . 


34£ 


Moloch in State Street . 


314 


The Jubilee Singers 


349 


Official Piety 


315 


Garrison 


350 


The Rendition .... 


315 






Arisen at Last .... 


316 


SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM. 




The Haschish .... 


316 


The Quaker of the Olden Time 


351 


The Kansas Emigrants . 


317 


Democracy 


351 


For Righteousness' Sake . 


317 


The Gallows .... 


352 


Letter from a Missionary of the 




Seed-Time and Harvest 


354r 


Methodist Episcopal Church 




To THE Reformers of England 


354 


South, in Kansas, to a Distin- 




The Human Sacrifice . 


355 


guished Politician 


318 


Songs of Labor. 




Burial of Barber 


319 


Dedication .... 


35T 


To Pennsylvania .... 


320 


The Shoemakers 


357 


Le Marais du Cygne .• 


320 


The Fishermen 


358 


The Pass of the Sierra 


321 


The Lumbermen 


359 


A Song for the Time 


322 


The Ship-Builders 


361 


What of the Day? 


322 


The Drovers .... 


362 


A Song, inscribed to the Fre- 




The Huskers .... 


363 


mont Clubs .... 


323 


The Reformer 


364 


The Panorama 


323 


The Peace Convention at Brus- 




On a Prayer-Book 


330 


sels 


366 


The Summons , . . 


332 


The Prisoner for Debt 


367 


To William H. Seward 


332 


The Christian Tourists . 


368 


In War Time. 




The Men of Old .... 


369 


To Samuel E. Sewall and 




To Pius IX 


370 


Harriet W. Seavall 


332 


Calef in Boston .... 


371 


Thy Will be Done 


333 


Our State 


371 


A Word for the Hour . 


333 


The Prisoners of Naples . 


372 


"EiN FESTE Burg ist unser 




The Peace of Europe 


373 


Gott" ..... 


334 


ASTR^A 


37a 


To John C. Fremont 


334 


The Disenthralled . 


374 


The Watchers 


335 


The Poor Voter on Election 




To Englishmen .... 


336 


Day 


374 


Mithridates at Chios . " . 


337 


The Dream of Pio Nono . 


373 


At Port Royal .... 


337 


The Voices 


37G 


AsTRiEA at the CaPITOL 


338 


The New Exodus .... 


377 


The Battle Autumn of 18G2 . 


339 


The Conquest of Finland . 


377 


Hymn, sung at Christmas by 




The Eve of Election . 


378 


THE Scholars of St. He- 




From Perugia 


379 


lena's Island, S. C. . 


340 


Italy 


381 


The Proclamation . 


340 


Freedom in Brazil .... 


381 


Anniversary Poem 


341 


After Election .... 


382 


Barbara Frietchie . 


342 


Disarmament 


382' 


What the Birds said . 


343 


The Problem .... 


382 


The Mantle of St. John de 




Our Country 


383 


Matha 


344 


On the Big Horn 


384 



CONTENTS 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE ANI 
NISCENT. 
Memories . 
Raphael .... 
Ego .... 
The Pumpkin 
Forgiveness 
To my Sister . 
My Thanks 
Remembrance 
My Namesake . 
A Memory 
My Dream 


) REMI- 

. 386 
387 

. 388 
390 

. 390 
. 391 

. 391 
392 

. 393 
395 
395 


Trinitas 

The Sisters .... 

"The Rock" in El Ghor . 

The Over-Heart . 

The Shadow and the Light 

The Cry of a Lost Soul . 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer . 

The Answer .... 

The Eternal Goodness . 

The Common Question 

Our Master .... 

The Meeting 

The Clear Vision . 

Divine Compassion 

The Prayer-Seeker 

The Brewing of Soma 

A Woman 

The Prayer of Agassiz . 
In Quest . . . 
The Friend's Burial . 
A Christmas Carmen 

Vesta 

Child-Songs .... 
The Healer .... 
The Two Angels . 
Overruled .... 
Hy.mn of the Dunkers . 
Giving and Taking 
The Vision of Echard . 
Inscriptions. 

On a Sun-Dial 

On a Fountain . 
The Minister's Daughter 
By their Works 
The Word .... 

The Book 

Requirement 

Help 

Utterance .... 
Oriental Maxims. 

TThe Inward Judge . 

Laying up Treasure . 

Conduct .... 
An Easter Flower Gift . 
The Mystic's Christmas 

At Last 

What the Traveller said 

Sunset 

"The Story of Ida" 
The Light that is felt . 
The Two Loves 
Adjustment .... 
Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj 
Revelation 

AT SUNDOWN. 

ToE. C.S 


. 434 

435 
. 435 

436 
. 437 

438 
. 439 

441 
. 442 

443 
. 443 

445 
. 447 


^,Jfefi B.\refoot Boy 

My Ps.\lm . 

The Waiting. 
__Snow-Bound 

My Triumph . 
In School-Days 

My Birthday 

Red Riding-Hood 

Response 

At Eventide 

Voyage of the Jettie 

My Trust . 

A Name .... 

Greeting . 

An Autograph 

Abram Morrison 

A Legacy 

RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

The Star of Bethlehej 
The Cities of the Plaij 
The Call of the Christ 
The Crucifixion . 
Palestine . 
Hymns from the Frenc 

MARTI NE. 

I. Encore un Hymne 
II. Le Cri de l'Ame 

The Familist's Hymn . 

Ezekiel 

What the Voice said. 

The Angel of Patience 

The Wife of Manoah 
Husband 

My Soul and I . 

Worship .... 

The Holy Land 

The Reward . 

The Wish of To-Day . 

All's Well . 

Invocation 

Questions of Life 

First-Da Y Thoughts 

Trust .... 


. . 396 

. 397 

398 
. 398 

406 
. 407 

408 
. 408 

409 
. 409 

410 
. 411 

412 
. 412 

413 
. 413 

415 

. 416 

i . . 417 

IAN . . 417 

418 
. 419 

H OF La- 

420 
. 421 

421 
. 423 

424 
. 425 

TO HER 

425 
. 426 

429 
. 430 

430 
. 431 

431 
. 431 

432 
. 433 

434 


448 
. 448 

449 
. 450 

450 
. 451 

452 
. 453 

454 
. 454 

4o4 
. 455 

455 
. 456 

456 
. 457 

459 
. 459 

459 
. 460 

460 
. 460 

461 
. 461 

461 

. 461 
462 

. 462 
462 

. 462 
463 

AT 

463 
. 464 

464 
. 464 

464 
. 465 

465 

461 



CONTENTS 



The Christmas of 1888 . 


467 


Mount Agiochook 


. 4{)0 


The Vow of Washington 


4()7 


The Drunkard to his Bottle 


490 


The Captain's Well . 


4G8 


The Fair Quakeress 


. 491 


An Outdoor Reception . 


470 


Bolivar 


491 


R. S. S., AT Deer Island on the 




Isabella of Austria . 


. 492 


Merkimac 


471 


The Fratricide . 


493 


Burning Drift- Wood 


471 


Isabel 


, 494 


0. W. Holmes on his Eightieth 




Stanzas 


494 


Birthday 


473 


Mogg Megone .... 


. 495 


James Russell Lowell . 


473 


The Past and Coming Year , 


506 


Haverhill 


473 


The Missionary .... 


. 506 


To G. G. : an Autograph 


474 


Evening in Burmah 


508 


Inscription 


475 


Massachusetts . . 


. 508 


Lydia H, Sigourney 


475 






Milton 


475 


II. Poems printed in the " Life 
Whittier." 


OF 


The Birthday Wreath 


475 




The Wind of March . 


476 


The Home-Coming of the Bride 


. 509 


Between the Gates 


476 


The Song of the Vermonters, 177 


9 509 


The Last Eve of (Summer . 


477 


To a Poetical Trio in the City of Go- 


To Oliver Wendell Holmes 


477 


tham 


. 510 






Album Verses 


512 


POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHIT- 




What State Street said to South 


TIER. 




Carolina, and what South Carolina 


The Dream of Argyle 


479 


said to State Street . 


. 512 


Lines, written on the Departure 




A Fremont Campaign Song . 


512 


OF Joseph Sturge .... 


480 


The Quakers are Out 


. 513 


John Quincy Adams 


481 


A Legend of the Lake . 


. 513 


Dr. Kane in Cuba .... 


481 


Letter to Lucy Larcom . 


. 514 


Lady Franklin „ . . . 


482 


Lines on leaving Appledore . 


. 515 


Night and Death .... 


482 


Mrs. Choate's House- Warming 


. 515 


The Meeting Waters 


483 


An Autograph 


515 


The Wedding Veil .... 


483 


To Lucy Larcom 


. 515 


Charity ...... 


483 


A Farewell .... 


. 516 






On a Fly-Leaf of Longfellow's 


&.PPENDIX. 




Poems 


. 516 


I. Early and Uncollected Verses 




Samuel E. Sewall . 


516 


The Exile's Departure 

The Deity 

The Vale of tlie IMerrimac 


484 

484 
485 


Lines written in an Album 

A Day's Journey . 

A Fragment .... 


. 516 

. 516 

. 516 


Benevolence . . . . 


485 


III. Notes 


. 517 


Ocean 


486 






The Sicilian Vespers . 


48() 


IV. A Chronological List of Mr. 


The Spirit of the North . 


487 


Whittier' s Poems . 


. 5^8 


The Earthquake .... 


487 


INDEX OF FIRST LINES 


533 


Judith at the Tent of Holofernes . 


488 






Metacom 


488 


INDEX OF TITLES 


. 539 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

The house is still standing in East Haverhill, Massachusetts, where John Greenleaf 
Whittier was born, December 17, 1807. It was built near the close of the seventeenth 
century by an ancestor of the poet, it sheltered several generations of Whittiers, in it 
John Greenleaf Whittier lived till his thirtieth year, and now it is likely to enjoy a long 
lease of life in association with his name, for since his death it has been purchased and 
held in trust as a shrine, and its chief room has been restored to the condition in which 
it was when the boy was living in it, the recollection of whose experience inspired that 
idyl of New England life, "bnow-Bound." 

It is to " Snow-Bound " that one resorts for the most natural and delightful narrative oi 
the associations amongst which Whittier passed his boyhood. His family held to the 
tenets of the Friends, and the discipline of that society in connection with the somewhat 
rigorous exactions of country life in New England in the early part of the century deter- 
mined the character of the formal education which he received. In later life he was 
wont to i-efer to the journals of Friends which he found in the scanty library in his 
father's house as forming a large part of his reading in boyliood. He steeped his mind 
with their thoiiglits and learned to love their authors for their unconscious saintliness. 
There were not more than thirty volumes on the shelves, and, with a passion for reading, 
he read them over and over. One of these books, however, was the Bible, and he possessed 
himself of its contents, not only becoming familiar with the text, but penetrated by the 
spirit. When he began to write, his practice pieces were very largely pai'aphrases of 
scriptural themes, and throughout his poetry allusions to Biblical characters and passages 
fall as naturally from his lips as allusions to Greek or Roman literature and history 
from the lips of Milton. 

Of regular schooling he had what the neighborhood could give, a few weeks each win- 
ter in the district school, and when he was nineteen, a little more than a year in an 
academy just started in Haverhill. In " Snow-Bound " he has drawn the portrait of one 
of his teachers at tlie district school, and his poem " To My Old Schoolmaster " commem- 
orates another, Joshua Coffin, with whom he preserved a strong friendship in his 
manhood, when they were engaged in the same great cause of tlie abolition of human 
slavery. These teachers, who, according to the old New England custom, lived in turn 
with the families of their pupils, brought into the Whittier household other reading than 
strictly religious books, and Coffin especially rendered the boy a great service in intro- 
ducing him to a knowledge of Burns, whose poems he read aloud once as the family sat 
by the fireside in the evening. The boy of fourteen was entranced ; it was the voice of 
poetry speaking directly to the ear of poetry, and the new-comer recognized in an instant 
the prophet whose mantle he was to wear. Coffin was struck with the effect on his 
listener, and left the book with him. In one of his best known poems, written a generation 
later, when receiving a sprig of heather in bloom, Whittier records his indebtedness to 
Burns. To use his own expression, "the older poet woke the younger." He had been 
dreaming of Indians, much as a young Scotsman might have pleased his imagination by 
picturing border chieftains. He said himself, looking back with amusement to his poem 
of " Mogg Megone," " it suggests the idea of a big Indian in his war paint strutting about 
in Sir Walter Scott's plaid." But except for one or two intentional imitations. Burns' 
influence over Whittier was summed up in that sudden illumination which showed him, 
not indeed the beauty of nature and the worth of man, — the knowledge of these was a 
birthright, — but what poetry could do in transfiguring both. 

The home life which the boy led, aside from the conscious or unconscious schooling 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



which he found in books, was one of many hardships, but within the sanctuary of a 
gracious and dignified home. The secluded valley in which he lived was three miles from 
the nearest village ; from the date of the erection of the homestead till now no neighbor's 
roof has been in sight. The outdoor life was that of a farmer with cattle, tempered 
indeed in the short summer by the kindly gifts of nature, so happily shown in the poem of 
the " Barefoot Boy," but for the most part a life of toil and endurance which left its 
marks indelibly in the shattered constitution of the poet. Twice a week the family drove 
to a Friends' meeting at Amesbury, eight miles ciistant, and in winter without warm 
wraps or protecting robes. The old barn, built before that celebrated in " Snow-Bound," 
had no doors, and the winter snows drifted upon its floor, for neither beasts nor men, 
in the custom of the time, were expected to resist cold except by their native vigor. 
Whittier's companions of his own age were a brother and two sisters, one of whom, 
Elizabeth Whittier, was his nearest associate for the better part of his life, and the house- 
hold held also that figure so beautiful and helpful in many families, an Aunt Mercy, as 
also a lively, adventurous bachelor. Uncle Moses. The father of the house, as we are 
told, was a man of few words ; the mother, whose life was spared till that happy time 
when mother and son change places in care-taking, had a rarely refined nature, in which 
the Quaker graces of calmness and order were developed into a noble beauty of living. 

The appendix to Whittier's Poetical Works contains a few out of a large number of 
poems written by him when he was a schoolboy. They display, as indeed did most of 
his writing for a few years to come, little more than a versifying facility and a certain 
sense of correct form as copied from correct, but rather lifeless models. They were, for 
all that, witnesses to the intellectual activity of a rudely trained boy, and showed that 
his mind was intent on high, oftentimes poetic themes. His mother and his sister Mary 
encouraged him, but his father, a hard-headed, hard-working farmer, of sound judgment 
and independent habits of thinking, was too severely aware of the straitened condition of 
the family to think of anything else for his son than a life of toil like his own. Mary 
Whittier, with a sister's pride, sent one of her brother's poems, unknown to the author, 
to the "Free Press " of Newburyport, a new paper lately started which commended itself 
by its tone to the Quaker Whittier, so that he had subscribed to it. The poem was 
printed, and the first that the poet knew of it was when he caught the paper from the 
postman riding by the field where he and his father were working. It was such a mo- 
ment as conies to a young poet, believing in himself and having that aspiration for 
recognition which is one of the holiest as it is one of the subtlest elements in the poetic 
constitution. The poem was followed by another, which the author himself sent ; and 
when it was printed, it was introduced by an editorial note, in which the fame of the poet 
was foretold, and a hint given as to his youth and condition. For with the publication 
of the first poem, " The Exile's Departure," the editor had become so interested that he 
had sought the acquaintance of the writer. 

Whittier was at work in the fields when the editor, himself a young man, called. He 
held back, but was induced by his sister to make himself presentable and come in to see 
the visitor. It was one of those first encounters which in the history of notable men are 
charged with most interesting potentialities. Garrison, for he was the editor, had not yet 
done more than take the first step on his thorny path to greatness, and Whittier was still 
working in the fields, though harboring poetic visitants. Garrison was but a few years 
older, and in later life those few years counted nothing, but now they were enough to 
lead him to take the tone of an adviser, and both to Greenleaf and his father, who entered 
the room, he spoke of the promise of the youth and the importance of his acquiring an 
academic education. 

It was against the more rigorous interpretation of the Friends' doctrine that literary 
culture should be made an end, and the notion that the boy should be sent to an academy 
was not encouraged ; but a few months later, Garrison having left Newburyport for Bos- 
ton, and Whittier making a new connection with the Haverhill " Gazette," the editor of that 
paper, Mr. A. W. Thayer, gave the same advice and pressed the consideration that a new 
academy was shortly to be opened in Haverhill. He offered the boy a home in his own 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



family, and the father now consented, moved also by the doubt if his son could stand the 
physical strain of farm work. He had no money, however, to spare, and the student 
must earn his own living. This he did by making a cheap kind of slipper, and devoted 
himself so faithfully to the industry in the few months intervening between the decision 
and the opening of the academy in May, 1827, that he earned enough to pay his expenses 
there for a term of six months. " He calculated so closely every item of expense," says 
his biographer, "that he knew before the beginning of the term that he would have 
twenty-five cents to spare at its close, and he actually had this sum of money in his pocket 
when his half year of study was over. It was the rule of his whole life never to buy 
anything until he had the money in hand to pay for it, and although his income was small 
and uncertain until past middle life, he was never in debt." 

By teaching a district school a few weeks and aiding a mei'chant with bookkeeping, he 
was enabled to make out a full year of study, and meantime continued to write both verse 
and prose for the newspapers. By this means he paved the way for an invitation when 
he was twenty-one years of age to enter the printing office in Boston of the Colliers, 
father and son, who published two weekly papers and a magazine. One of the weeklies 
was a political journal, "The Manufacturer," the other a paper of reform and humani- 
tarianism called " The Philanthropist." Whittier had editorial charge of the former, and 
occupied himself with writing papers on temperance and the tariff of which he was an 
ardent advocate, and with verses and tales. It was not altogether a congenial relation in 
which he found himself, though the occupation was one to which he was to turn naturally 
for some time to come for self-support ; he remained with the Colliers for a year and a 
half, and then returned to his father's farm, with between four and five hundred dollars, 
the savings of half his salary. This he devoted to freeing the farm from the incumbrance 
of a mortgage, and himself took charge of the farm, for his father was rapidly failing in 
health. 

The death of his father in June, 1830, while it set him free from his father's occupa- 
tion, made it still more imperative for him to earn his living, since the care of the family 
fell upon him. He had been using his pen and studying meanwhile, and his verses were 
bringing him acquaintances and friends. Through one of these, the brilliant George D. 
Prentice, he was induced to take up editorial work again in Hartford; but after a deter- 
miiied effort it became clear that his health was too fragile to permit him to devote 
himself to the exacting work of editing a journal, and in January, 1832, he returned to 
his home. Just at this time he published his first book, a mere pamphlet of twenty-eight 
octavo pages containing a poem of New England legendary life, entitled " Moll Pitcher." 
He had contributed besides, more than a hundred poems in the three years since leaving 
the academy, and had written many more. But though thus active with his pen, his 
strongest ambition, it may be said, was at this time in the direction of politics. For the 
next four years he remained on the farm at Haverhill, and when in April, 1836, the farm 
was sold, he removed with his mother and sister to the village of Amesbury, chiefly that they 
might be nearer the Friends' meeting, but also that Whittier might be more in the centre 
of things. In his seclusion at East Haverhill he had eagerly watched the course of public 
events. He was a great admirer of Henry Clay, and a determined opponent of Jackson. 
With his engaging character, his intellectual readiness, and that political instinct which 
never deserted him, he was rapidly coming into public notice in his district, and his own 
desire for serving in office drew him on. To be a member of Congress he must be twenty- 
five years old, and at the election which was to occur just before his birthday there were 
many indications that he would be the nominee of his party. This was at the end of 1832, 
but before the next election occurred there was a grave obstacle created by Whittier 
himself, and thenceforward through the years when he would naturally engage in public 
life he was practically debarred. 

It was not the precariousness of his health which kept Whittier out of active politics, 
though this was a strong reason for avoiding the stress and strain of a public life, but the 
decision which led him to enlist in an unpopular cause. In November, 1831, he had 
published his poem " To William Llojd Garrison," which introduces the section Anti-Slavery 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



Poems in this collection. It intimates a personal influence under which, with a moral 
nature fortified by great political insight, he began to consider seriously the movement for 
the abolition of slavery which was making itself evident here and there. As a specific 
result of this study he wrote in the spring of 1833 the pamphlet " Justice and Expediency," 
and published it at his own expense. It was a piece of writing compact with carefully- 
gathered facts and logical deduction, and earnest with the rhetoric of personal conviction. 
Every sentence was an arraignment of slavery and a blow at his own chances of political 
office. The performance was in answer to the appeal of his own truthful nature, and it 
was a deliberate act of renunciation. 

Now also began, at first with remote suggestions as in "Toussaint L'Ouverture," theu 
nearer and nearer as he sings his tribute to the men of his day, known or unknown, who. 
iad been champions of freedom, Storrs, Shipley, Torrey, those bursts of passionate verse- 
which were the vent of his soul overburdened with a sense of the deep wrong committed 
against God and man by the persistency of African slavery in tlie United States. In the- 
years immediately following his decision to cast in his lot with the small band of despised 
anti-slavery agitators almost all of the poems which he wrote were of two sorts, either 
breathings of a spirit craving close communion with God as in his hymns, his lines oa 
" The Call of the Christian," " The Female Martyr," and other poems, or fiery, scarce-con- 
trolled outbursts of feeling upon the evils of slavery, and vials of wrath poured out on 
those who aided and abetted the monstrous wrong. Such poems as "The Slave Ships,"' 
" The Hunters of Men," " Stanzas for the Times," " Clerical Oppressors," " Massachusetts,"' 
" The Pastoral Letter," derive their power not from their poetic spirit and form so mucL 
as from the righteous indignation, the pity, the overcharged feeling which crowd them. 
And if, in the years before, Whittier's verses with their conventional smoothness had 
drawn notice by the gentle spirit which suffused them, now his loud cry, violent and 
tempestuous, broke upon the ear with a harshness and yet an insistent fervor which com- 
pelled men to listen. It is indeed a striking phenomenon in poetic growth which one- 
perceives who is familiar with Whittier's compositions and casts his eye down a chronolog- 
ical list of his poems. Up to the date of his enlistment in the ranks of the anti-slavery 
army his ambition had been divided between literature and politics, with a taste in verse- 
which was harmonious and an execution which was not wanting in melody yet had no> 
remarkable note. After he stepped into the ranks a great change came over his spirit. 
He rushed into verse in a tumultuous fashion, careless of the form, eager only to iitter- 
the message which half choked him with its violence. There was a fierce note to his- 
poetry, rough, but tremendously earnest. This was the first effect, such a troubling of 
the waters as gave a somewhat turbid aspect to the stream, and for a while his verse was. 
very largely declamatory, rhymed polemics. 

But such poems as " Expostulation," beginning 

" Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! " 

were to people then living scarcely so much poems as they were sounds of a great trumpet 
which were heard, not for their musical sonanee, but for their power to stir the blood, and 
Whittier, though living almost in seclusion, became a name of note to many who would 
scarcely have known of him had he been a mere legislator or smooth-singing verse makero 
He was recognized by the anti-slavery leaders as one of themselves, and this not only 
because of his powerful speech in song, but because on closer acquaintance he proved to 
be a most sagacious and wise reader of men and affairs. His own neighbors quickly 
learned this quality in him. He was sent to the legislature in 1835 and reelected in 
1836, but his frail health made it impossible for him to continue in this service. Never- 
theless, he wielded political power with great skill aside from political office. He was 
ixidefatigable in accomplishing political ends through political men. No important 
nominations were made in his district without a preliminary conference with him, and 
more than once he compelled unwilling representatives to work for the great ends he had 
in view. It may be said here tliat tliough a steadfast leader in the anti-slavery cause he 
differed from some of his associates, both now and throughout his life, in setting a high 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xv 

value upon existing political organizations. " From first to last," says his biographer, 
" he refused to come out from his party until he had done all that could be done to induce 
it to assist in the work of reform," and Whittier himself, in an article written about this 
time, exclaims, " What an absurdity is moral action apart from political i " meaning of 
course when dealing with those subjects which demand political action. Once more, in a 
letter written to the anti-Texas convention of 1845, he said that though as an abolitionist 
he was no blind worshiper of the Union, he saw nothing to be gained by an effort, neces- 
sarily limited and futile, to dissolve it. The moral and political power requisite for 
dissolving the Union could far more easily abolish every vestige of slavery. 

We have anticipated a little in these comments the strict order of Whittier's life. In 
1836 was published the first bound volume of his verse. It was confined to his poem 
** Mogg Megone," which he had before printed in the " New England Magazine." It may 
be taken as the last expression of Whittier's poetic mind before the great change came 
over it of which we have spoken, and he was himself later so aware of its lack of genuine 
life that in collecting finally his writings he buried this so far as he could in the fine type 
of an appendix ; but at the end of 1837 Isaac Knapp, publisher of the " Liberator," 
Garrison's paper, to which Whittier had been contributing his stirring verses, without 
consulting the poet, issued a volume of over a hundred pages, entitled " Poems written 
during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between the Years 
1830 and 1838. By John G. Whittier." This was the first collection of his miscellaneous 
poems, and a year later another volume was issued by Joseph Healy, the financial agent 
of the Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile Whittier had been staying 
awhile in Pliiladelphia, engaged in editing the " Pennsylvania Freeman." It was during 
this time that Pennsylvania Hall was burnt by a mob enraged at the gathering there of an 
anti-slavery convention. Besides his work on tlie paper, which was frequently interrupted 
by ill health, he devoted himself in otlier ways to the promotion of the cause in which he 
was so ardently involved, but early in 1840 he found it imperative to give up all this work 
and retire to his home in Amesbury. 

From this time forward he made no attempt to engage in any occupation which did not 
comport with a quiet life in his own home, except that for a few mouths in 1844 he 
resided in Lowell, editing the " Middlesex Standard." He wrote much for the papers, 
and the poetic stream also flowed with greater freedom and it may be said clearness. 
He contributed a number of poems to the " Democratic Review " and other periodicals, 
and in 1843 the firm of W. D. Ticknor published " Lays of my Home, and Other Poems," 
the first book from which Whittier received any remuneration. The struggle for main- 
tenance through these years was somewhat severe, but in January, 1847, he formed a 
connection which was not only to afford h'un a more liberal support, but was to give him a 
most favorable outlet for his writings, both prose and verse. 

It had been decided by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to establish a 
weekly paper in Washington, and the editorial charge was committed to Dr. Gamaliel 
Bailey, an intrepid and able man of experience. The paper was named " The National 
Era," and Whittier was invited to become a regular contributor, editorial and otherwise, 
but not required to do his work away from home. The paper, as is well known, was the 
medium for the publication of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and its circulation was so consider- 
able as to make it a source of profit to its conductors as early as by the end of the first 
year. From 1847 till 1860 Whittier made this paper the chief vehicle of his writings, 
contributing not only poems, but reviews of contemporary literature, editorial articles, 
letters, sketches, and the serial which was published afterward in a book, " Leaves from 
Margaret Smith's Journal." 

In 1849 B. B. Mussey & Co. of Boston brought out a comprehensive collection of 
Whittier's Poems in a dignified octavo volume illustrated with designs by Hammatt 
Billings. It was a venture made quite as much on friendly as on commercial grounds. 
Mr. Mussey was a cordial supporter of the anti-slavery cause and had a great admiration 
for Wliittier's genius. He was determined to publish the poems in a worthy form, and 
his generous act met with an agreeable reward. Its success was a testimony to tho 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



repute in which Whittier was now held. At the same time his publishers, Messrs. Ticknor 
& Fields, were in negotiation with him for a new volume, and in 1850 appeared " Songs of 
Labor, and Other Poems." 

These two volumes which gathered the fruit of twenty years show unmistakably the 
further growth of Whittier's poetic power. With the establishment of his anti-slavery 
convictions into firm working principles, the maturing of his experience, the enlarge- 
ment of his political vision, and the increase in his friendship, there had come also a 
strengthening of his hand in the use of his pen, and a finer use, because more clear and 
restrained, of his poetic voice. Moreover, the religious feeling which was seen in his 
earlier life, and put to the test by closer association with men, had deepened into a 
serene confidence in God which pervaded his life and sustained him against all the shock 
of a disappointing age. Moreover, his eye and ear were in harmony with nature, and 
more and more he found not only an escape to nature as a relief from the world but a 
positive enjoyment in the field of beauty. Poetry, once a literary exercise, then a chan- 
nel for the relief of a mind overburdened with its sense of an unconquered evil, was now 
become the full, free expression of a nature broadening under the thought of God, 
deligJiting in response to the world of beauty, strong and secure in a great purpose of 
humanity. It was his natural voice, which formerly broke under the strain of a chang- 
ing constitution, but now was pure, sweet and far-carrying, obeying a trained impulse and 
resonant with a full force. 

The establishment of " The Atlantic Monthly " in 1857 gave another impetus to Whit- 
tier's poetic productiveness. Here was a singidar illustration of the growth in the commun- 
ity about him of a spirit quite in agreement with his own personality. Opposition to sla- 
very lay at the base of the origin of the magazine, and yet in the minds of its projectors, 
this political bond was to unite men of letters and not simply antagonists of slavery. The 
" Atlantic " was to be the organ of the literary class, bvit it was to be by no means exclu- 
sively devoted to an anti-slavery crusade. Indeed it would almost seem as if this specific 
purpose of the magazine was almost lost sight of at first in the richness and abundance 
of general literature wliich it immediately stimulated. It is easy now to see how natural 
and congenial a medium this was for Whittier's verse. In subjecting his political and 
literary ambition to a great moral purpose, so that he could no longer hope for political 
official power, and, in his own words 

" Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 

The crank of an opinion mill, 

Making his rustic reed of song 

A weapon in the war with wrong. 

Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough 

That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow," — 

in doing this, though it cost him a struggle, he had fulfilled the true saying that to save 
one's life one must lose it. He had given up the name and place of a political magnate, 
but he had secured the more impregnable position of the power behind the throne in poli- 
ties, and in place of a smooth versifier, holding the attention of those with whom poetry 
was a plaything, he had become one of the few imperative voices of song, and had taken 
his place as one of the necessary men in the group of men of letters who now came to- 
getlier to represent the highest force in American literature. 

For it is to be observed that Wliittier was now no longer regarded as only the singer 
of spirited songs flying with all their winged power straight at the enemy as they sped 
from a bow held by an Apollo. The passion which he had shown in his polemic verse 
had awakened his whole nature, and his poems on whatever theme came from a nature 
which had been developed in all its powers by this commanding purpose. Nevertheless, 
it is noticeable how the new opportunity afforded by the " Atlantic," and the increased 
association with the other great writers of the day, was consonant with if not the cause of 
a broadening of Whittier's mind, a sunny burst of full, life, finding expression in such 
poems as " Skipper Ireson's Ride," " The "Sycamores," " The Pipes at Lucknow," " Mabel 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



Martin," " The Garrison of Cape Ann," "The Swan Song of Parson Avery," "Telling 
the Bees," " The Last Walk in Autumn," as well as " The Eve of Election " and " Moloch 
in State Street." 

The war for the Union naturally found Whittier strongly stirred, and more than ever 
watchful of the great issue which throughout his manhood has been constantly before his 
eyes, and his triumphant " Laus Deo " is as it were the Nunc Dimittis of this modern pro- 
phet and servant of the Lord. But Whittier was a Quaker not in any conventional 
sense, but by birthright, conviction, and growing consciousness of communion with God. 
Though he wrote such a stirring ballad, therefore, as " Barbara Frietchie," he wrote also 
the lines addressed to his fellow-believers : — 

" The levelled gun, the battle brand 
We may not take : 
But, calmly loyal, we can stand 
And suffer with our suffering land 
For conscience' sake." 

It is interesting also to observe how in this time of stress and pain, he escaped to the 
calm solace of nature. His poem " The Battle Autumn of 1862," records this emotion 
specifically, but more than one poem in the group " In War Time " bears testimony to this 
sentiment. Meanwhile other poems written during the years 1861-1865 illustrate the 
longing of Whittier's nature for relief from the terrible knowledge of human strife, a 
longing definitely expressed by him in the prelusive address to William Bradford, the 
Quaker painter, prefacing "Amy Weutworth," in which he says : — 

" We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share 
With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, 
Yet owning with full hearts and moistened eyes 
The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, 
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all 
Who give their loved ones for the living wall 
'Twixt law and treason, — in this evil day 
May haply find, through automatic play 
Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, 
And hearten others with the strength we gain." 

Something of the same note is struck in the introduction to " The Countess." But be- 
fore the war closed, Whittier met with a personal loss which meant much to him every 
way. His sister Elizabeth, as we have seen, had been his closest companion, his most in- 
timate acquaintance. He had shared his life with her in no light sense, and now he was 
to see the flame of that life flicker and at last expire in the early fall of 186-1. The 
first poem after her death, " The Vanishers," in its theme, its faint note as of a bird 
calling from tho wood, is singularly sweet both as a sign of the return of the poet to 
the world after his flight from it in sympathy and imagination with the retreating spirit 
of his sister, and as a prophecy of the character of so large a part of Whittier's poetry 
from this time forward. " Tiie Eternal Goodness," written a twelvemonth later, may 
be said more positively than any other poem to contain Whittier's creed, and the fullness 
of faith which characterizes it found free and cheerful expression again and again. 

Yet another poem which immediately followed it is significant not only by its repetition 
of his note of spiritual trust, but by its strong witness to the sane, human quality of 
Whittier's genius. " Snow-Bound," simple and radiant as it is with human life, is also the 
reflection of a mind equally at home in spiritual realities. It may fairly be said to sum 
up Whittier's personal experience and faith, and yet so absolutely free is it from egotism 
that it has taken its place as the representative poem of New England country life, quite 
as surely as Burns' " The Cotter's Saturday Night " expresses one large phase of Scot- 
tish life. 

The success which attended " Snow-Bound " was immediate, and the result was such as 
to put Whittier at once beyond the caprices of fortune, and to give him so firm a place in 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



the affections of his countrymen as to complete as it were the years of his struggle and 
his patient endurance. There is something almost dramatic in the appearance of this 
poem. The war was over : the end of that long contest in which Wliittier, physically 
weak but spiritually strong,- had been a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
night. What was the force which had been too mighty for a great entrenched wrong ? 
With no conscious purpose, but in the simple delight of poetry, Wliittier sang this 
winter idyl of the North, and one now sees how it imprisons the light which shatters the 
evil, for it is an epitome of homely work and a family life lived in the eye of God, 
" duty keeping pace with all," and the whole issuing in that large hope. 



' Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day. 



The history of Whittier's life after this date is written in his poems. The outward 
adventure was sliglit enough. He divided his year between the Amesbury home and 
that which he established with other kinsfolk at Oak Knoll in Dan vers. In the summer 
time he was wont to seek the mountains of New Hampshire or the nearer beaches that 
stretch from Newburyport to Portsmouth. The scenes thus familiar to him were trans- 
lated by him into song. Human life blended with the forms of nature, and he made this 
whole region as distinctively his poetic field as Wordsworth made the Lake district of 
Cumberland, or as Irving made the banks of the Hudson. In such a group as " The 
Tent on the Beach," in "Among the Hills," "The Witch of Wenham," "Sunset on the 
Bearcamp," " The Seeking of the W^aterfall," " How the Women went from Dover," 
*' The Homestead," and many others he records the delight which he took in nature and 
especially in the human associations with natui*e. 

" The Tent on the Beach " again illustrates the personal attachments which he formed 
and which constituted so large an element in the last thirty years of his life. In actual 
contact and in the friendships formed through books, one may read the largeness of 
Whittier's sympathy with his fellows, and the warmth of his generous nature. Such 
poems as the frequent ones commemorating Garrison, Sumner, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, 
the Fields's, Mrs. Child, the Spoffords, Stedman, Barnard, Bayard Taylor, Weld and 
others illustrate the range of his friendship ; but the poems also which bear the names of 
Tilden, Mulford, Thiers, Halleck, Agassiz, Garibaldi illustrate likewise a strong sense of 
the lives of men who, perhaps, never came within the scope of personal acquaintance. 

Nor was it only through human lives that he touched the world about him. His bio- 
grapher bears witness to the assiduity with which he compensated in later years for the 
restrictions imposed by necessity on^liis education in earlier years. He became a great 
and discursive reader, and his poems, especially after " Snow-Bound," contain many 
proofs of this both in the suggestions which gave rise to them and in the allusions which 
they contain. Northern literature is reflected in " The Dole of Jarl Thorkell," " King 
Volmer and Elsie," "The Brown Dwarf of Riigen," and others; Eastern life and 
religion reappear in " Oriental Maxims," " Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj," " The Brew- 
ing of Soma," " Giving and Taking," and many more, and history, especially that in- 
volved with his own religious faith, gave opportunity for " The King's Missive," " St. 
Gregory's Guest," " Banished from Massachusetts," " The Two Elizabeths," " The Penn- 
sylvania Pilgrim." . 

Yet, as we suggested above, the most constant strain, after all, was that which found 
so full expression in " The Eternal Goodness." So pervasive in Whittier's mind was this 
thought of God that it did not so much seek occasion for formal utterance, as it used with 
the naturalness of breathing such opportunities as arose, touching with light one theme 
after another, and forming, indeed, the last whispered voice heard from his lips, " Love 
to all the world." 

It was a serene life of the spirit which Whittier led in the closing years of his life, 
and he was secure in friendship and the shelter of home. He read, he saw his neighbors 
and friends, he wrote letters, he took the liveliest interest in current affairs, especially 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xix 

in politics. He had been a Presidential elector in both the Lincoln campaigns ; so that 
he used humorously to say that he was the only person who had had the opportunity to 
vote for Lincoln four times. He was much sought after for occasional poems, and he 
complied with these requests from time to time, as in his "Centennial Hymn," "In the 
Old South," " The Bartholdi Statue," " One of the Signers," and " Haverhill ; " but he 
was quite as likely to take hint from an occasion without the asking. Yet all this time 
he was assailed by infirmities which would have shaken the serenity of most. He suffered 
intensely from neuralgic disordei-s, and was sadly broken in the last years of his life. 

He sang up to the end, one may say. A few weeks before his death, he wrote the 
verses to Oliver Wendell Holmes which stand at the completion of this collection in the 
division " At Sundown." True to the controlling spirit of his life, he sings, — 

" Tlie hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, 
When at the Eternal Gate 
We leave the words and works we call our own, 
And lift void hands alone 

" For love to fill. Onr nakedness of soul 
Brings to that Gate no toll ; 
Giftless we come to Him, who aU things gives, 
And live because He lives." 

He died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7, 1892, in the eighty-fifth year 
of his age. 

H. E. a 



INTRODUCTION 

The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note by way 
of pi'e/ace : — 

" In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical writ- 
ings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scattered children 
of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I have been unable, by 
reason of illness, to give that attention to their revision and ai-rangement which 
respect for the opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand. 

" That there are pieces in this collection which I would ' willingly let die,' I am 
free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I must submit to the 
inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There are others, intimately 
connected with the author's life and times, which owe their tenacity of vitality to 
the circumstances under which they were written, and the events by which they 
were suggested. 

" The long poem of ' Mogg Megone * was in a great measure composed in early 
life ; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as the writer 
•would have chosen at any subsequent period." 

After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been requested 
by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and revised edition of my 
poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added much to the interest of the work 
beyo^'^ the correction of my own errors and those of the press, with the addition 
of a few heretofore unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which 
seemed necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few gen- 
eral heads, and have transferred the long poem of " Mogg Megone " to the Appen- 
dix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored to affix the 
dates of composition or publication as far as possible. 

In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional prosaic 
lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have neither strength nor patience 
to undertake their correction. 

Perhaps a word of explanation may l)e needed in regard to a class of poems 
written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an artistic point 
of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the earnest and often vehement 
expression of the writer's thought and feeling at critical periods in the great con- 
flict between Freedom and Slavery. They were written with no expectation that 
they would survive the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, 
alarm signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart, forged 



INTRODUCTION 



at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful word-selection which re" 
flection and patient brooding over them might have given. Such as they are, they 
belong to the history of the Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks 
of its progress. If their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous 
wrong of Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In at- 
tacking it, we did not measure our words. " It is," said Garrison, " a waste of 
politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the contest was, in a great 
measure, an impersonal one, — hatred of slavery and not of slave-masters. 

" No common wrong provoked our zeal, 
The silken gauntlet which is thrown 
In such a quarrel rings like steel." 

Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the " Notes on 
Virginia," says : " It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the subject of 
Slavery." 

After the great contest was over, no class of the American people were more 
ready, with kind words and deprecation of harsh retaliation, to welcome back the 
revolted States than the Abolitionists ; and none have since more heartily rejoiced 
at the fast increasing prosperity of the South. 

Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my writings, I 
leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I care to republish, and 
some things which, had the matter of choice been left solely to myself, I should 
have omitted. 

J. G. W. 



1 



PROEM 

[Written to introduce the first general collection of Whittier's Poems.] 

I LOVE the old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through, 

The songs of Spenser's golden days, 

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
Sprinkling our noon of time witli freshest morning dew. 

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours 
To breathe their marvellous notes I try ; 

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 

In silence feel the dewy showers, 
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. 

The rigor of a frozen clime, 
The harshness of an untaught ear, 

The jarring words of one whose rhyme 

Beat often Labor's hurried time. 
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are hei'e. 

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace. 
No rounded art tlie lack supplies ; 

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 

Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
I view her common forms with unanomted eyes. 

Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
The secrets of the heart and mind ; 

To drop the plummet-line below 

Our common world of joy and woe, 
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. 

Yet here at least an earnest sense 
Of human right and weal is shown ; 

A hate of tyranny intense. 

And hearty in its vehemence. 
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 

O Freedom ! if to me belong 
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine. 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 

Still with a love as deep and strong 
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine!" 

Amesbuky, 11th mO; 1847. 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE VAUDOIS TEACHER 

This poem was suggested by the account 
given of the manner in which the Waldenses 
disseminated their principles among the Cath- 
olic gentry. They gained access to the house 
through their occupation as peddlers of silks, 
jewels, and trinkets. " Having disposed of 
some of their goods," it is said by a writer 
who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, 
"they cautiously intimated that they had 
commodities far more valuable than these, 
inestimable jewels, which they would show if 
they could be protected from the clergy. 
They would then give their purchasers a Bible 
or Testament ; and thereby many were deluded 
into heresy." 

The poem, under the title Le Colporteur 
Vaudois, was translated into French by Pro- 
fessor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further 
naturalized by Professor Alexandre Rodolphe 
Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on French 
literature, afterwards published. It became 
familiar in this form to the Waldenses, who 
adopted it as a household poem. An American 
clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it 
when he was a student, about the year 1850, in 
the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland, 
but the authorship of the poem Avas unknown 
to those who used it. Twenty-five years later, 
Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author, 
■WTote to the moderator of the Waldensian 
synod at La Tour, gi^ang the information. At 
the banquet which closed the meeting of the 
synod, the modei-ator announced the fact, and 
was instructed in the name of the Waldensian 
church to write to me a letter of thanks. My 
letter, written in reply, was translated into 
Italian and printed throughout Italy. 

" O LADY fair, these silks of mine are beau- 
tiful and rare, — 

The richest web of the Indian loom, which 
beauty's queen might wear ; 

And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, 
with whose radiant light they vie; 

I have brought them -with me a weary 
way, — will my gentle lady buy ? " 



Tlie lady smiled on the worn old man 

through the dark and clusterhig 

curls 
Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view 

his silks and glittering pearls ; 
And she placed their price in the old man's 

hand and lightly turned away, 
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest 

call, — " My gentle lady, stay ! 

" O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a 

purer lustre flings, 
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled 

crown on the lofty brow of kmgs ; 
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, 

whose virtue shall not decay, 
"Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and 

a blessing on thy way ! " 

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel 

where her form of grace was seen. 
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark 

locks waved their clasping pearls 

between ; 
" Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, 

thou traveller gray and old. 
And name the price of thy precious gem, 

and my page shall coimt thy gold." 

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's 

brow, as a small and meagre book, 
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from 

his folding robe he took ! 
" Here, lady fair-, is the pearl of price, may 

it prove as such to thee ! 
Nay, keep thy gold — I ask it not, for the 

word of God is free ! " 

The hoary traveller went his way, but the 

gift he left behind 
Hath had its pure and perfect work on 

that highborn maiden's mind. 
And she hath turned from the pride of sin 

to the lowliness of truth, 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Aiid given her human heart to God m its 
beautiful hour of youth ! 

And she hath left the gray old halls, where 

an evil faith had power, 
The courtly knights of her father's train, 

and the maidens of her bower ; 
And she hatli gone to the Vaudois vales by 

lordly feet mitrod. 
Where the poor and needy of earth are 

rich in the perfect love of God ! 



THE FEMALE MARTYR 

Mary G , aged eighteen, a " Sister of 

Charity," died in one of our Atlantic cities, 
during the prevalence of the Indian cholera, 
while in voluntary attendance upon the sick. 

" Bring out your dead ! " The midnight 
street 
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low 
call ; 
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, 
Glanced throusrh the dark the coarse white 



Her coffin and her pall. 
" What — only one ! " the brutal hack-man 

said, 
As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead. 

How sunk the inmost hearts of all, 

As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, 
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall ! 
The dying turned him to the wall, 

To hear it and to die ! 
Onward it rolled ; while oft its driver 

stayed. 
And hoarsely clamored, " Ho ! bring out 
your dead." 

It paused beside the burial-place ; 

" Toss in your load ! " and it was done. 
With quick hand and averted face, 
Hastily to the grave's embrace 

They cast them, one by one. 
Stranger and friend, the evil and the just. 
Together trodden in the churchyard dust ! 

And thou, yoimg martyr ! thou wast there ; 

No white-robed sisters round thee trod, 
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer 
Rose through the damp and noisome air, 

Giving thee to thy God ; 



Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper 

gave 
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave I 

Yet, gentle sufferer ! there shall be, 

In every heart of kindly feeling, 
A rite as holy paid to thee 
As if beneath the convent-tree 

Thy sisterhood were kneeling. 
At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, 

keeping 
Their tearful watch around thy place of 
sleeping. 

For thou wast one in whom the light 

Of Heaven's own love was kindled weU ; 
Endviring Avith a martyr's might. 
Through weary day and wakeful night, 

Far more than words may tell : 
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown. 
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone ! 

Where manly hearts were failing, where 

The throngf ul street grew foul with death, 
O high-souled martyr ! thou wast there. 
Inhaling, from the loathsome air, 

Poison with every breath. 
Yet shrinking not from offices of dread 
For the wrung dying, and the unconscious 
dead. 

And, where the sickly taper shed 

Its light through vapors, damp, confined, 

Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, 

A new Electra by the bed 
Of suffering himian-kiiid ! 

Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, 

To that pure hope which fadeth not away. 

Innocent teacher of the high 
And holy mysteries of Heaven ! 

How turned to thee each glazing eye. 

In mute and awful sympathy. 
As thy low prayers were given ; 

Aud the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the 
while, 

An angel's features, a deliverer's smile ! 

A blessed task ! and worthy one 

Who, turning from the world, as thou, 
Before life's pathway had begmi 
To leave its spring-time flower and sun, 

Had sealed her early vow ; 
Giving to God her beauty and her youth. 
Her pure affections aud her guileless truth 



A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND 



Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here 
Could be for thee a meet reward ; 

Thine is a treasure far more dear : 

Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear 
Of living mortal heard 

The joys prepared, the pressed bliss 
above, 

The holy presence of Eternal Love ! 

Sleep on in peace. The earth has not 
A nobler name than thine shall be. 

The deeds by martial manhood wrought, 

The lofty energies of thought, 
The fire of poesy, 

These have but frail and fading honors ; 
thine 

Shall Time imto Eternity consign. 

Yea, and when thrones shall crumble 
down, 
And human pride and grandeur fall, 
The herald's line of long renown. 
The mitre and the kingly crown, — 

Perishing glories all ! 
The pure devotion of thy generous heart 
Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a 
part. 



EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENG- 
LAND LEGEND" 

Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher 

How has New England's romance fled, 

E\'en as a \4sion of the morning ! 
Its rites foredone, its guardians dead. 
Its priestesses, bereft of dread, 

Waking the veriest urchin's scorning ! 
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell 

And fire-dance round the magic rock, 
Forgotten like the Druid's spell 

At moonrise by his holy oak ! 
No more along the shadowy glen 
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men ; 
No more the unquiet churchyard dead 
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed. 

Startling the traveller, late and lone ; 
As, on some night of starless weather. 
They silently commune together. 

Each sitting on his o\vn head-stone ! 
The roofless house, decayed, deserted, 
Its li\-ing tenants all departed. 
No longer rings with midnight revel 
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil ; 



No pale blue flame sends out its flashes 
Through creviced roof and shattered 

sashes ! 
The witch-grass round the hazel spring 
May sharply to the night-air sing, 
But there no more shall withered hags 
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, 
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters 
As beverage meet for Satan's daughters ; 
No more their mimic tones be heard. 
The mew of cat, the chirp of bird. 
Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter 
Of the fell demon following after ! 
The cautious goodman nails no more 
A horseshoe on liis outer door. 
Lest some unseemly hag shoidd fit 
To his own mouth her briflle-bit ; 
The goodwife's churn no more refuses 
Its wonted culinary uses 
Until, with heated needle burned. 
The mtch has to her place returned ! 
Our mtches are no longer old 
And A\Tinkled beldames, Satan-sold, 
But yoimg and gay and laugliiug creatures, 
With the heart's smishine on their fea- 

tiu-es ; 
Their sorcery — the light which dances 
Where the raised lid unveils its glances ; 
Or that low-breathed and gentle tone. 

The music of Love's twilight hours, 
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan 

Above her nightly closing flowers, 
Sweeter than tl)at which sighed of yore 
Along the charmed Ausonian shore ! 
Even she, our own weird heroine. 
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn, 

Sleeps calmly where the living laid 
her ; 
And the wide realm of sorcery. 
Left by its latest mistress free. 

Hath found no gTay and skilled invader. 
So perished Albion's " glammai-ye," 

With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping. 
His charmed torch beside his knee. 
That even the dead himself might see 

The magic scroll Avithin his keeping. 
And now our modern Yankee sees 
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries ; 
Aid naught above, below, around, 
Of life or death, of sight or sound, 

Whate'er its nature, form, or look, 
Excites his terror or surprise, — 
All seeming to his knowing eyes 
Familiar as his " catechise," 

Or " Webster's Spelling-Book." 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE DEMON OF THE STUDY 

The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, 
And eats his meat and drinks his ale, 

And beats the maid with her unused broom, 
And the lazy lout with his idle flail ; 

But he sweeps the floor and tlireshes the 
corn, 

And hies him away ere the break of dawn. 

The shade of Denmark fled from the sim. 
And the Cocklane ghost from the barn- 
loft cheer, 

The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, 
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, 

And the devil of Martin Luther sat 

By the stout monk's side in social chat. 

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of 
him 
Who seven times crossed the deep, 
Twined closely each lean and withered 
limb. 
Like the nightmare in one's sleep. 
But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad 

cast 
The evil weight from his back at last. 

But the demon that cometh day by day 
To my quiet room and fireside nook. 

Where the casement light falls dim and 
gray 
On faded painting and ancient book, 

Is a sorrier one than any whose names 

Are chronicled well by good King James. 

No bearer of burdens like Caliban, 
No runner of errands like Ariel, 

He comes in the shape of a fat old man, 
Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell ; 

And whence he comes, or whither he goes, 

I know as I do of the wind wliich blows. 

A stout old man with a greasy hat 

Slouched heavily down to his dark, red 
nose. 

And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, 

Looking through glasses with iron bows. 

Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can, 

Guard well your doors from that old man ! 

He comes with a careless " How d' ye do ? " 
And seats himself in my elbow-chair ; 

And my morning paper and pamphlet new 
Fall forthwith under his special care, 



And he wipes his glasses and clears hia 

throat. 
And, button by button, unfolds his coat. 

And then he reads from paper and book, 
In a low and husky asthmatic tone. 

With the stolid sameness of posture and 
look 
Of one who reads to himself alone ; 

And hour after hour on my senses come 

That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum. 

The price of stocks, the auction sales. 
The poet's song and the lover's glee, 

The horrible murders, the seaboard gales, 
The marriage list, and iliejeu d'esprit, 

All reach my ear in the self-same tone, — 

I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on ! 

Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon 

O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, 
The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, 

Or sovmd of flutes o'er a moonlight sea. 
Or the low soft music, perchance, which 

seems 
To float through the slumbering singer's 
dreams. 

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone. 

Of her in whose features I sometimes look, 

As I sit at eve by her side alone. 

And we read by turns, from the self-same 
book. 

Some tale perhaps of the olden time. 

Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. 

Then when the story is one of woe, — 
Some prisoner's plaint through his dim- 
geon-bar, 

Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low 
Her voice sinks down like a moan afar ; 

And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail. 

And his face looks on me worn and pale. 

And when she reads some merrier song, 
Her voice is glad as an April bird's. 

And when the tale is of war and ^vi-ong, 
A trumpet's summons is in her words, 

And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, 

And see the tossing of phmie and spear ! 

Oh, pity me then, when, day by day. 

The stout fiend darkens my parlor door ; 

And reads me perchance the self-same lay 
Which melted in music, the night before, 



THE FOUNTAIN 



From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet, 
Aud moved Like twiu roses which zephyrs 
meet ! 

I cross my floor Avith a nervous tread, 
I whistle aud laiigh aud slug aud shout, 

I flourish my cane above his head, 
Aud stir up the fire to roast him out ; 

I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane. 

And press my hands on my ears, in vain ! 

I 've studied Glan-sdlle and James the wise, 
Aud wizard black-letter tomes which treat 

Of demons of every name and size 

Which a Christian man is presumed to 
meet. 

But never a hint and never a line 

Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. 

I've crossed the Psalter with Brady aud 
Tate, 

Aud laid the Primer above them all, 
I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate, 

Aud liiuig a wig to my parlor wall 
Once worn by a learned Judge, they say, 
At Salem com-t in the witchcraft day ! 

" Conjuro te, sceleratissime, 

Ahire ad tuum locum ! " — still 

Like a \asible nightmare he sits by me, — 
The exorcism has lost its skill ; 

Aiid I hear again in my haunted room 

The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum ! 

Ah ! conmtend me to Mary Magdalen 
With her sevenfold plagues, to the 
wandering Jew, 

To the terrors which haunted Orestes when 
The furies his midnight curtains drew. 

But charm him off, ye who charm him can. 

That reading demon, that fat old man ! 



THE FOUNTAIN 



On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, 
County, is a fountain of clear water, gushing 
from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is 
about two miles from the junction of the 
Powow River -vvith the Merrimac. 

Traveller ! on thy journey toiling 

By the swift Powow, 
With the summer sunshine falling 

On thy heated brow, 



Listen, while all else is still. 
To the brooklet from the hill. 

Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing 

By that streamlet's side. 
And a greener vei'dure showing 

Where its waters glide, 
Down the hill-slope murmuring on, 
Over root and mossy stone. 

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth 

O'er the sloping hill, 
Beautifid and freshly spriugeth 

That soft-flowing rill. 
Through its dark roots wreathed and bare. 
Gushing up to sun and air. 

Brighter waters sparkled never 

In that magic well. 
Of whose gift of life forever 

Ancient legends tell. 
In the lonely desert wasted. 
And by mortal lip imtasted. 

Waters which the proud Castilian 

Sought with longing eyes. 
Underneath the bright pavilion 

Of the Indian skies. 
Where his forest pathway lay 
Through the blooms of Florida. 

Years ago a lonely stranger, 

With the dusky brow 
Of the outcast forest-ranger, 

Crossed the swift Powow, 
And betook him to the rill 
And the oak upon the hill. 

O'er his face of moody sadness 

For an instant shone 
Something like a gleam of gladness. 

As he stooped him down 
To the fountain's grassy side. 
And his eager tliirst supplied. 

With the oak its shadow throwing 

O'er his mossy seat. 
And the cool, sweet waters flowing 

Softly at his feet, 
Closely by the fountain's rim 
That lone Lidian seated him. 

Autumn's earliest frost had given 

To the woods below 
Hues of beauty, such as heaven 



s 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Lendeth to its bow ; 
Aiid the soft breeze from the west 
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. 

Par behind was Ocean striving 

With his chains of sand ; 
Southward, sunny glimpses giving, 

'Twixt the swells of land, 
Of its calm and silvery track, 
Eolled the tranquil Merrimac. 

Over village, wood, and meadow 

Gazed that stranger man, 
Sadly, till the twilight shadow 

Over all things ran, 
Save where spire and westward pane 
Elashed the smiset back again. 

Oazing thus upon the dwelling 

Of his warrior sires. 
Where no lingering trace was telling 

Of their wigwam fires. 
Who the gloomy thoughts might know 
Of that wandering child of woe ? 

Naked lay, in sunshine glowing, 

Hills that once had stood 
Down their sides the shadows throwing 

Of a mighty wood, 
Where the deer his covert kept, 
And the eagle's pinion swept ! 

Where the birch canoe had glided 

Down the swift Powow, 
Dark and gloomy bridges strided 

Those clear waters now ; 
And where once the beaver swam. 
Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam. 

Tor the wood-bird's merry singing. 

And the hunter's cheer, 
Pron clang and hammer's ringing 

Smote upon his ear ; 
And the thick and sullen smoke 
Trom the blackened forges broke. 

Could it be his fathers ever 

Loved to linger here ? 
Tliese bare hills, this' conquered river, — 

Could they hold them clear, 
With their native loveliness 
Tamed and tortured into this ? 

Sadly, as the shades of even 
Gathered o'er the hill, 



While the western half of heaven 

Blushed with sunset still, 
From the fountain's mossy seat 
Turned the Indian's weary feet. 

Year on year hath flown forever, 

But he came no more 
To the hillside on the river 

Where he came before. 
But the villager can tell 
Of that strange man's visit well. 

And the merry children, laden 
With their fruits or flowers, — 

Roving boy and laughing maiden, 
La their school-day hours, 

Love the simple tale to tell 

Of the Lidian and his well. 



PENTUCKET 

The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, 
called by the Indians Pentucket, was for 
nearly seventeen years a frontier town, and 
during thirty years endured all the horrors of 
savage warfare. In the year 1708, a combined 
body of French and Indians, under the com- 
mand of De Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, 
the infamous and bloody sacker of Deerfield, 
made an attack upon the village, which at that 
time contained only thirty houses. Sixteen of 
the villagers were massacred, and a still larger 
number made prisoners. About thii-ty of the 
enemy also fell, and among them Hertel de 
Rouville. The minister of the place, Benja- 
niin Rolfe, was killed by a shot through his 
own door. In a paper entitled The Border 
War of 1708, published in my collection of 
Recreations and Miscellanies, I have given a 
prose narrative of the surprise of Haverhill. 

How sweetly on the wood-girt to^vn 
The mellow light of sunset shone ! 
Each small, bright lake, whose waters still 
Mirror the forest and the hill. 
Reflected from its waveless breast 
The beauty of a cloudless west, 
Glorious as if a glimpse were given 
Within the western gates of heaven. 
Left, by the spirit of the star 
Of sunset's holy hour, ajar ! 

Beside the river's tranquil flood 
The dark and iow-walled dwellings stood. 
Where many a rood of open land 
Stretched up and down ou either hand, 



THE NORSEMEN 



With corn-leaves waving freshly green 
The thick and blackened stumps between. 
Behind, unbroken, deep and dread. 
The wild, imtravelled forest spread. 
Back to those mountains, white and cold, 
Of which the Indian trapper told, 
Upon whose summits never yet 
Was mortal foot in safety set. 

Quiet and calm Avithout a fear 
Of danger darkly lurking near. 
The weary laborer left his plough, 
The milkmaid carolled by her cow ; 
From cottage door and household hearth 
Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. 
At length the murmur died away. 
And silence on that \'illage lay. 
• — So slept Pompeii, tower and hall. 
Ere the quick earthquake swallowed all, 
Undreaming of the fiery fate 
Which made its dwellings desolate ! 

Hours passed away. By moonlight sped 
The Merrimac along his bed. 
Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood 
Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood, 
Silent, beneath that tranqiul beam. 
As the hushed grouping of a dream. 
Yet on the still air crept a soimd, 
No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound. 
Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing. 
Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing. 

Was that the tread of many feet, 
Which downward from the hillside beat ? 
What forms were those which darkly stood 
Just on the margin of the wood ? 
Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim. 
Or paling rude, or leafless limb ? 
No, — through the trees fierce eyeballs 

glowed. 
Dark human forms in moonshine showed, 
Wild from their native wilderness, 
With painted limbs and battle-dress ! 

A yell the dead might wake to hear 
Swelled on the night air, far and clear ; 
Then smote the Indian tomahawk 
On crashing door and shattering lock ; 
Tlien rang the rifle-shot, and then 
The shrill death-scream of stricken men, — 
Sank the red axe in woman's brain, 
And childhood's cry arose in vain. 
Bursting through roof and window came, 
Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame, 



And blended fire and moonlight glared 
On still dead men and scalp-knives bared. 

The morning sun looked brightly through 
The river willows, wet with dew. 
No somid of combat filled the air. 
No shout was heard, nor gmishot there ; 
Yet still the thick and sullen smoke 
From smouldering ruins slowly broke ; 
And on the greensward many a stain, 
And, here and there, the mangled slain, 
Told how that midnight bolt had sped 
Pentucket, on thy fated head ! 

Even now the villager can tell 
Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell, 
Still show the door of wasting oak, 
Through which the fatal death-shot broke,. 
And point the curious stranger where 
De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare ; 
Whose hideous head, in death still feared,. 
Bore not a trace of hair or beard ; 
And still, within the churchyard groimd, 
Heaves darkly up the ancient mound, 
Whose grass-grown surface overlies 
The victims of that sacrifice. 



THE NORSEMEN 

In the early part of the present century, a. 
fragivent of a statue, rudely chiselled from 
dark gray stone, was found in the town of 
Bradford, on the Merrimac. Its origin must 
be left entirely to conjecture. The fact that, 
the ancient Northmen visited the northeast 
coast of North America and probably New 
England, some centuries before the discovery 
of the western world by Columbus, is now very 
generally admitted. 

Gift from the cold and silent Past 1 

A relic to the present cast. 

Left on the ever-changing strand 

Of shifting and unstable sand. 

Which wastes beneath the steady chime 

And beating of the waves of Time ! 

Who from its bed of primal rock 

First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? 

Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,. 

Thy rude and savage outline wi'ought ? 

The waters of my native stream 
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam ; 
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar 
The circles widen to its shore ; 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And cultured field and peopled town 
Slope to its willowed margin down. 
Yet, while tliis morning breeze is bringing 
The home-life sound of school-bells ring- 
ing, 
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar 
Of the fire-winged and steedless car, 
And voices from the wayside near 
Come quick and blended on my ear, — 
A spell is in this old gray stone, 
My thoughts are with the Past alone ! 

A change ! — The steepled town no more 

Stretches along the sail-thronged shore ; 

Like palace-domes in simset's cloud. 

Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud : 

Spectrally rising where they stood, 

I see the old, primeval wood ; 

Dark, shadow-like, on either hand 

I see its solemn waste expand ; 

It climbs the green and cultured hill, 

It arches o'er the valley's rill, 

And leans from cliff and crag to throw 

Its wild arms o'er the stream below. 

Unchanged, alone, the same bright river 

Flows on, as it will flow forever ! 

I listen, and I hear the low 

Soft ripple where its waters go ; 

I hear behind the panther's cry, 

The wild-bird's scream goes tlirilling by, 

And shyly on the river's brink 

The deer is stooping down to drink. 

But hark ! — from wood and rock flung back. 
What sound comes up the Merrimac ? 
What sea-worn barks are those which throw 
The light spray from each rushing prow ? 
Have they not in the North Sea's blast 
Bowed to the waves the sti-aining mast ? 
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun 
Of Thule's night has shone upon ; 
Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep 
Round icy drift, and headland steep. 
Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daugh- 
ters 
Have watched them fading o'er the waters. 
Lessening through driving mist and spray. 
Like white-winged sea-birds on their way ! 

Onward they glide, — and now I view 
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew ; 
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye. 
Turned to green earth and svmimer sky. 
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside 
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide ; 



Bared to the sun and soft warm air. 
Streams back the Northmen's yellow hair. 
I see the gleam of axe and spear, 
A sound of smitten shields I hear, 
Keeping a harsh and fitting time 
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme ; 
Such lays as Zetland's S8&ld has smig, 
His gray and naked isles among ; 
Or muttered low at midnight hour 
Roimd Odin's mossy stone of power. 
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling I'une ; 
The Gael has heard its stormy swell, 
The light Frank knows its summons well ; 
lona's sable-stoled Culdee 
Has heard it somiding o'er the sea. 
And swept, with hoary beard and hair, 
His altar's foot in trembling prayer ! 

'T is past, — the 'wildering vision dies 

In darkness on my dreaming eyes ! 

The forest vanishes in air. 

Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare ; 

I hear the common tread of men. 

And hum of work-day life again ; 

The mystic relic seems alone 

A broken mass of common stone ; 

And if it be the chiselled limb 

Of Berserker or idol grim, 

A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, 

The stormy Viking's god of War, 

Or Praga of the Runic lay, 

Or love-awakening Siona, 

I know not, — for no graven line. 

Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign. 

Is left me here, by which to trace 

Its name, or origin, or place. 

Yet, for this vision of the Past, 

This glance upon its darkness cast, 

My spirit bows in gratitude 

Before the Giver of all good, 

Wlio fashioned so the human mind, 

That, from the waste of Time beliind, 

A simple stone, or mound of earth. 

Can summon the departed forth ; 

Quicken the Past to life again, 

The Present lose in what hath been, 

And in their primal freshness sliow 

The buried forms of long ago. 

As if a portion of that Thought 

By which the Eternal will is \vrought. 

Whose impulse fills anew with breath 

The frozen solitude of Death, 

To mortal mind were sometimes lent, 

To mortal musings sometimes sent. 



FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS 



To whisper — even when it seems 
But IMemory's fantasy of clreams — 
Tlu'ough the mind's waste of woe and sin, 
Of an immortal origin ! 



FUNERAL TREE OF THE 
SOKOKIS 

Polan, chief of the Sokokis Indians of the 
country between Aganientieus and Casco Bay, 
was killed at Windham on ISebag-o Lake m the 
spring- of 1756. After the wliites had retii-ed, 
the surviving Indians " swayed " or bent down 
a young- tree until its roots were upturned, 
placed the body of their chief beneath it, and 
then released the tree, which, in springing' 
back to its old position, covered the grave. 
The Sokokis were early converts to the Catho- 
lic faith, ilost of them, prior to the year 1756, 
had removed to the French settlements on the 
St. Francois. 

Around Sebago's lonely lake 
There lingers not a breeze to break 
The mirror which its waters make. 

Tlie solemn pines along its shore, 

The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er, 

Are painted on its glassy floor. 

Tlie Sim looks o'er, with hazy eye. 
The snowy movmtain-tops which lie 
Piled colcily up agaiiast the sky. 

Dazzling and white ! save where the 

bleak, 
Wild winds have bared some spliutermg 

peak. 
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. 

Yet green are Saco's banks below, 
And belts of spruce and cedar show. 
Dark fringing round those cones of snow. 

Tlie earth hath felt tlie breath of spring, 
Though yet on her deliverer's wing 
The lingering frosts of winter cling. 

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks, 
And mildly from its simny nooks 
The blue eye of the violet looks. 

And odors from the springing grass, 
Tlie sweet birch and the sassafras. 
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. 



Her tokens of renewing care 
Hath Nature scattered everywhere, 
In bud and flower, and warmer air. 

But in their hour of bitterness, 
What reck the broken Sokokis, 
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this ? 

The turf's red stain is yet imdried. 
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died 
Along Sebago's wooded side; 

And silent now the himters stand, 
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land 
Slopes upward from the lake's white sand 

Fire and the axe have swept it bare. 
Save one lone beech, unclosing there 
Its light leaves in the vernal air. 

With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute. 
They break the damp turf at its foot, 
And bare its coiled and twisted root. 

They heave the stubborn trunk aside, 
The firm roots from the earth divide, — 
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide. 

And there the fallen chief is laid. 
In tasselled garb of skins arrayed, 
And girded with his wampum-braid. 

The silver cross he loved is pressed 
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest 
Upon his scarred and naked breast. 

'T is done : the roots are backward sent, 
The beecheii-tree stands up unbent, 
The Indian's fitting monument ! 

When of that sleeper's broken race 
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place. 
Which knew them once, retains no ti-ace ; 

Oh, long may sunset's light be shed 
As now upon that beech's head, 
A green memorial of the dead ! 

There shall his fitting requiem be, 
In northern winds, that, cold and free, 
Howl nightly in that fimeral tree. 

To their wild wail the waves which break 
Forever round that lonely lake 
A soleum imdertone shall make ! 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And who shall deem the spot unblest, 
Where Nature's younger children rest, 
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast ? 

Deem ye that mother loveth less 
These bronzed forms of the wilderness 
She foldeth in her long caress ? 

As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow, 
As if with fairer hair and brow 
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below. 

What though the places of their rest 
No priestly knee hath ever pressed, — 
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed ? 

What though the bigot's ban be there, 
And thoughts of wailing and despair, 
And cursing in the place of prayer ! 

Yet Heaven hath angels watching round 
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound, — 
And they have made it holy grovind. 



There ceases man's frail jvulgment 
His powerless bolts of cursing fall 
Unheeded on that 'grassy pall. 



aU 



O peeled and hvmted and reviled. 
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild ! 
Great Natiue o\vns her simple child ! 

And Nature's God, to whom alone 
The secret of the heart is known, — 
The hidden language traced thereon ; 

Who from its many cumberings 

Of form and creed, and outward things, 

To light the naked spirit brings ; 

Not with our partial eye shall scan. 
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban, 
The spirit of our brother man ! 

ST. JOHN 

The fierce rivalry between Charles de La 
Tour, a Protestant, and D'Aulnay Charnasy, a 
Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms 
one of the most romantic passages in the history 
of the New World. La Tour received aid in sev- 
eral instances from the Puritan colony of Mas- 
saclmsetts. During one of his voyages for the 
purpose of obtaining arms and provisions for 
his establishment at St. John, his castle was 
attacked by DAulnay, and successfully de- 



fended by its high-spirited mistress. A second 
attack however followed in the fourth month, 
1647, when DAulnay was successful, and the 
garrison was put to the sword. Lady La Tour 
languished a few days in the hands of her ene- 
my, and then died of grief. 

" To the winds give our banner ! 

Bear homeward again ! " 
Cried the Lord of Acadia, 

Cried Charles of Estienne ! 
From the prow of his shallop 

He gazed, as the sun. 
From its bed in the ocean, 

Streamed up the St. John. 

O'er the blue western waters 

That shallop had passed, 
Where the mists of Penobscot 

Clung damp on her mast. 
St. Saviour had looked 

On the lieretic sail, 
As the songs of the Huguenot 

Rose on tlie gale. 

The pale, ghostly fathers 

Remembered her well. 
And had cursed her wliile passing, 

With taper and bell ; 
But the men of Monhegan, 

Of Papists abhorred. 
Had welcomed and feasted 

The heretic Lord. 

Thev had loaded his shallop 

With dun-fish and ball. 
With stores for his larder. 

And steel for his wall. 
Pemaquid, from her bastions 

And turrets of stone, 
Had welcomed his comuig 

With banner and gun. 

And the prayers of the elders 

Had followed his way, 
As homeward he glided, 

Down Pentecost Bay. 
Oh, well sped La Tour I 

For, in peril and pain, 
His lady kept watch. 

For his coming again. 

O'er the Isle of the Pheasant 

The morning sun shone. 
On the plane-trees which shaded 

The shores of St. John. 



ST. JOHN 13 


" Now, why from yon battlements 


But woe to the heretic, 


Speaks not my love ! 


Evermore woe ! 


Why waves there no banner 


When the son of the church 


My fortress above ? " 


And the cross is his foe ! 


Dark and wild, from his deck 


" In the track of the shell. 


St. Estienne gazed about, 


In the path of the ball. 


On fire-wasted dwellings, 


Pentagoet swept over 


And silent redoubt ; 


The breach of the wall ! 


From the low, shattered walls 


Steel to steel, gmi to gun. 


Which the dame had o'errun, 


One moment, — and then 


There floated no banner. 


Alone stood the victor. 


There thundered no gun ! 


Alone with his men ! 


But beneath the low arch 


" Of its sturdy defenders, 


Of its doorway there stood 


Thy lady alone 


A pale priest of Rome, 
In his cloak and his hood. 


Saw the cross-blazoned banner 


Float over St. John." 


With the bound of a lion. 


" Let the dastard look to it ! " 


La Tour sprang to land. 


Cried fiery Estienne, 


On the throat of the Papist 


" W^ere D'Aidnay King Louis, 


He fastened his hand. 


I 'd free her again ! " 


" Speak, son of the Woman 


" Alas for thy lady ! 


Of scarlet and sin! 


No service from thee 


What wolf has been prowling 


Is needed by her 


My castle within? " 


W^hom the Lord hath set free ; 


From the grasp of the soldier 


Nine days, in stern silence, 


The Jesuit broke. 


Her thraldom she bore. 


Half in scorn, half in sorrow, 


But the tenth morning came. 


He smiled as he spoke : 


And Death opened her door ! " 


■" No wolf, Lord of Estienne, 


As if suddenly smitten 


Has ravaged thy hall, 


. La Tour staggered back ; 


But thy red-handed rival, 


His hand grasped his sword-hilt, 


Witii fire, steel, and ball ! 


His forehead grew black. 


On an errand of mercy 


He sprang on the deck 


I hitherward came. 


Of his shallop again. 


While the walls of thy castle 


" We cruise now for vengeance ! ^ 


Yet spouted with flame. 


Give way ! " cried Estienne. 


'" Pentagoet's dark vessels 


" Massachusetts shall hear 


Were moored in the bay. 


Of the Huguenot's wrong. 


Grim sea-lions, roaring 


And from island and creekside 


Aloud for their prey." 


Her fishers shall throng ! 


" But what of my lady ? " 


Pentagoet shall rue 


Cried Charles of Estienne. 


What his Papists have done, 


" On the shot-crumbled turret 


"When his palisades echo 


Thy lady was seen : 


The Puritan's gun ! " 


•" Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, 


Oh, the loveliest of heavens 


Her hand grasped thy pennon, 


Hung tenderly o'er him. 


While her dark tresses swayed 


There were waves in the sunshine, 


In the hot breath of cannon ! 


And green isles before him ; 



14 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Bvit a pale hand was beckoning 

The Huguenot on ; 
And in blackness and ashes 

Behind was St. John ! 



THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON 

Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman trav- 
eller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a 
cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred 
by the natives, the leaves of which were said 
to fall only at certain intervals, and he who 
had the happiness to find and eat one of them 
was restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The 
traveller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, 
sitting silent and motioidess under the tree. 

They sat in silent watchfulness 
The sacred cypress-tree about, 

And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, 
Their failing eyes looked out. 

Gray Age and Sickness waiting there 
Through weary night and lingering 
day, — 

Grim as the idols at their side. 
And motionless as they. 

Unheeded in the boughs above 

The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet ; 

Unseen of them the island flowers 
Bloomed brightly at their feet. 

O'er them the tropic night-storm swept, 
The thunder crashed on rock and liill ; 

The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed, 
Yet there they waited still ! 

What was the world without to them ? 

The Moslem's smiset-call, the dance 
Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam 

Of battle-flag and lance ? 

They waited for that falling leaf 

Of which the wandering Jogees sing : 

Which lends once more to wintry age 
The greenness of its spring. 

Oh, if these poor and blinded ones 
In trustful patience wait to feel 

O'er torpid pulse and failing limb 
A youthful freshness steal ; 

Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree 
Whose healing leaves of life are shed, 



In answer to the breath of prayer, 
Upon the waiting head — 

Not to restore our failing forms. 
And build the spirit's broken shrine, 

But on the fainting soul to shed 
A light and life divine — 

Shall we grow weary in our watch, 
And murmur at the long delay ? 

Impatient of our Father's tinje 
And His appointed way ? 

Or shall the stir of outward things 
Allure and claim the Christian's eye, 

When on the heathen watcher's ear 
Their powerless murmurs die ? 

Alas ! a deeper test of faith 

Than prison cell or martyr's stake. 

The self-abasing watchfulness 
Of silent prayer may make. 

We gird us bravely to rebuke 

Our erring brother in the wrong, — 

And in the ear of Pride and Power 
Our warning voice is strong. 

Easier to smite with Peter's sword 

Than " watch one hour " in humbling 
prayer. 

Life's " great things," like the Syrian lord, 
Our hearts can do and dare. 

But oh ! we shrink from Jordan's side, 
From waters which alone can save; 

And murmur for Abana's banks 
And Pharpar's brighter wave. 

O Thou, who in the garden's shade 
Didst wake Thy weary ones again. 

Who slumbered at that fearful hour 
Forgetful of Thy pain ; 

Bend o'er us now, as over them. 

And set our sleep-boimd spirits free, 

Nor leave us slumbering in the watch 
Oiu' souls should keep with Thee I 



THE EXILES 

The incidents upon which the following bal- 
lad has its foundation occurred about the year 
1660. Thomas Maey was one of the first, if 



THE EXILES 



15 



not the first white settler of Nantucket. The 


Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife, 


career of Macy is briefly but carefully outlined 


" Come in, old man ! " quoth she. 


in James S. Pike's The New Puritan. 


" We will not leave thee to the storm, 




Whoever thou mayst be." 


The goodman sat beside his door, 




One sultry afternoon, 


Then came the aged wanderer in. 


With his young wife singing at his side 


And silent sat him down ; 


An old and goodly time. 


While all within grew dark as night 




Beneath the storm-cloud's frown. 


A. glimmer of heat was in the air, — 
The dark green woods were still ; 




But while the sudden lightning's blaze 


And the skirts of a hea\7 thunder-cloud 


Filled every cottage nook, 


Hung over the western hill. 


And with the jarring thunder-roll 




The loosened casements shook, 


Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud 




Above the wilderness, 


A heavy tramp of horses' feet 


As some dark world from upper air 


Came sounding up the lane. 


Were stooping over this. 


And half a score of horse, or more. 




Came plunging through the rain. 


At times the solemn thimder pealed, 




And all was still again. 


" Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy door, — 


Save a low murmur in the air 


We would not be house-breakers ; 


Of coming vnnd and rain. 


A rueful deed thou 'st done this day. 




In harboring banished Quakers." 


Just as the first big rain-drop fell, 




A weary stranger came, 


Out looked the cautious goodman then. 


And stood before the farmer's door, 


With much of fear and awe. 


With travel soiled and lame. 


For there, with broad wig drenched with 


Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope 


rain, 
The parish priest he saw. 


Was in his quiet glance. 




And peace, like autunm's moonlight. 


" Open thy door, "thou wicked man, 


clothed 


And let thy pastor in. 


His tranquil comitenance, — 


And give God thanks, if forty stripes 




Repay thy deadly sin." 


A look, like that his Master wore 




In Pilate's comicil-hall : 


" What seek ye ?," quoth the goodman ; 


It told of wrongs, but of a love 


" The stranger is my guest ; 


Meekly forgi\ing all. 


He is worn with toil and grievous \vrong, — 




Pray let the old man rest." 


" Friend ! wilt thou give me shelter 




here ? " 


" Now, out upon thee, canting knave ! " 


The stranger meekly said ; 


And strong hands shook the door. 


And, leaning on his oaken staff. 


" Believe me, Macy," quoth the priest. 


The goodman's features read. 


" Thou 'It rue thy conduct sore." 


" My Ufe is hvmted, — evil men 


Then kindled Macy's eye of fire : 


Are follo^ving in my track ; 


" No priest who walks the earth. 


The traces of the torturer's whip 


Shall pluck away the stranger-guest 


Are on my aged back ; 


Made welcome to my hearth." 


" And much, I fear, 't will peril thee 


Down from his cottage wall he caught 


Within thy doors to take 


The matchlock, hotly tried 


A hunted seeker of the Truth, 


At Preston-pans and Marston-moor, 


Oppressed for conscience' sake." 


By fiery Lreton's side ; 



i6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Where Puritan, and Cavalier, 

With shout and psalm contended ; 

And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer. 
With battle-thunder blended. 

UlJ rose the ancient stranger then : 

" My spirit is not free 
To bring the wrath and violence 

Of evil men on thee ; 

" And for thyself, I pray forbear, 

Bethink thee of thy Lord, 
Who healed again the smitten ear, 

And sheathed His follower's sword. 

*' I go, as to the slaughter led. 

Friends of the poor, farewell ! " 
Beneath his hand the oaken door 

Back on its hinges fell. 

*' Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay," 

The reckless scoffers cried. 
As to a horseman's saddle-bow 

The old man's arms were tied. 

And of his bondage hard and long 

Li Boston's crowded jail, 
Where suffering woman's prayer was 
heard, 

With sickening childhood's wail. 

It suits not with our tale to tell ; 

Those scenes have passed away ; 
Let the dim shadows of the past 

Brood o'er that evil day. 

" Ho, sherifE ! " quoth the ardent priest, 

" Take Goodman Macy too ; 
The sin of tliis day's heresy 

His back or purse shall rue." 

" Now, goodwife, haste thee ! " Macy cried. 

She caiight his manly arm ; 
Behind, the parson urged pursuit. 

With outcry and alarm. 

Ho ! speed the Macys, neck or naught, — 

The river-course was near ; 
The plashing on its pebbled shore 

Was music to their ear. 

A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch, 

Above the waters hmig, 
And at its base, with every wave, 

A small light wherry swimg. 



A leap — they gain the boat — and there 

The goodman wields his oar ; 
" 111 luck betide them all," he cried, 

" The laggards on the shore." 

Down tlirough the crashing underwood, 

The burly sheriff came : — 
" Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thyself ; 

Yield in the King's own name." 

" Now out upon thy hangman's face ! " 

Bold Macy answered then, — 
" Whip women, on the village green, 

But meddle not with men." 

The priest came panting to the shore, 
His grave cocked hat was gone ; 

Behind him, like some owl's nest, lumg 
His wig upon a thorn. 

" Come back ! come back ! " the parson cried, 

" The church's curse beware." 
"Curse, an thou wilt," said Macy, " but 

Thy blessing prithee spare." 

" Vile scoffer ! " cried the baffled priest, 
" Thou 'It yet the gallows see." 

" Who 's born to be hanged will not be 
drowned," 
Quoth Macy, merrily ; 

" And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-by ! " 

He bent him to his oar, 
And the small boat glided quietly 

From the twain upon the shore. 

Now in the west, the heavy clouds 

Scattered and fell asunder. 
While feebler came the rush of rain, 

And fainter growled the thunder. 

And through the broken clouds, the sun 

Looked out serene and warm, 
Painting its holy symbol-light 

Upon the passing storm. 

Oh, beautiful ! that rainbow span, 
O'er dim Crane-neck was bended ; 

One bright foot touched the eastern hills, 
And one with ocean blended. 

By green Pentucket's southern slope 

The small boat glided fast ; 
The watchers of the Block-house saw 

The strangers as they passed. 



THE KNIGHT 


OF ST. JOHN 17 


That night a stalwart garrison 


How others drew around them, 


Sat shaking in their shoes, 


And how their fishing sped, 


To hear the dip of Indian oars, 


Until to every wind of heaven 


The glide of birch canoes. 


Nantucket's sails were spread ; 


The fisher-wives of Salisbury — 


How pale Want alternated 


The men were all away — 


With Plenty's gulden smile ; 


Looked out to see the stranger oar 


Behold, is it not written 


Upon their waters play. 


In the annals of the isle ? 


Deer Island's rocks and fir-trees threw 


And yet that isle remaineth 


Their sunset-shadows o'er them. 


A refuge of the free, 


And Newbury's spire and weathercock 


As when true-hearted Macy 


Peered o'er the pines before them. 


Beheld it from the sea. 


Around the Black Rocks, on their left, 


Free as the winds that winnow 


The marsh lay broJ,d and green ; 


Her shrubless hills of sand, 


And on their right with dwarf shrubs 


Free as the waves that batter 


crowned, 


Along her yielding land. 


Plum Island's hills were seen. 






Than hers, at duty's summons, 


With skilful hand and wary eye 


No loftier spirit stirs. 


The harbor bar was crossed ; 


Nor falls o'er human suffering 


A plaything of the restless wave, 


A readier tear than hers. 


The boat on ocean tossed. 






God bless the sea-beat island ! 


The glory of the sunset heaven 


And grant forevermore. 


On land and water lay ; 


That charity and freedom dwell 


On the steep hills of Agawam, 


As now upon her shore ! 


On cape, and bluff, and bay. 




They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann, 


THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOH'K 


And Gloucester's harbor-bar ; 




The watch-fire of the garrison 


Ere down yon blue Carpathian hills. 


Shone like a setting star. 


The sun sliall sink again, 




Farewell to life and all its ills, 


How brightly broke the morning 


Farewell to cell and chain ! 


On Massachusetts Bay ! 




Blue wave, and bright green island, 


These prison shades are dark and cold,. 


Rejoicing in the day. 


But, darker far than they. 




The shadow of a sorrow old 


On passed the bark in safety 


Is on my heart alway. 


Round isle and headland steep ; 




No tempest broke above them. 


For since the day when Warkworth wood 


No fog-cloud veiled the deep. 


Closed o'er my steed, and I, 




An alien from my name and blood, 


Far round the bleak and stormy Cape 


A weed cast out to die, — 


The venturous Macy passed. 




And on Nantucket's naked isle 


When, looking back in sunset light, 


Drew up his boat at last. 


I saw her turret gleam, 




And from its casement, far and white, 


And how, in log-built cabin. 


Her sign of farewell stream. 


They braved the rough sea-weather ; 




And there, in peace and quietness, 


Like one who, from some desert shore, 


Went down life's vale together ; 


Doth home's green isles descry, 



i8 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And, vainly longing', gazes o'er 
The waste of wave and sky ; 

So from the desert of my fate 

I gaze across the past ; 
Forever on life's dial-plate 

The shade is backward cast ! 

I *ve wandered wide from shore to shore, 

I 've knelt at many a shrine ; 
And bowed me to the rocky floor 

Where Bethlehem's tapers shine ; 

And by the Holy Sepulchre 

I 've pledged my knightly sword 

To Christ, His blessed Church, and her, 
The Mother of our Lord. 

Oh, vain the vow, and vam the strife ! 

How vain do all things seem ! 
My soul is in the past, and life 

To-day is but a dream ! 

In vain the penance strange and long. 

And hard for flesh to bear ; 
The prayer, the fasting, and the thong. 

And sackcloth shirt of hair. 

The eyes of memory will not sleep, — 

Its ears are open still ; 
And vigils with the past they keep 

Against my feeble will. 

And still the loves and joys of old 

Do evermore uprise ; 
I see the flow of locks of gold, 

The shine of loving eyes ! 

Ah me ! upon another's breast 

Those golden locks recline ; 
I see upon another rest 

The glance that once was mine. 

" O faithless priest ! O perjured knight ! ' 

I hear the Master cry ; 
" Shut out the vision from thy sight. 

Let Earth and Nature die. 

" The Church of God is now thy spouse. 
And thou the bridegroom art ; 

Then let the burden of thy vows 
Crush down thy human heart ! " 

In vain ! This heart its grief must know, 
Till life itself hath ceased, 



And falls beneath the self-same blow 
The lover and the priest ! 

O pitying Mother ! soiils of light. 
And saints and martyrs old ! 

Pray for a weak and sinful knight, 
A suffering man uphold. 

Then let the Paynim work his will, 
And death unbind my chain, 

Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill 
The sun shall fall again. 



CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK 

In 1658 two young persons, son and daughter 
of Lawrence Southwick of Salem, who had 
himself been imprisoned and deprived of nearly 
all his property for having entertained Quakers 
at his house, were fined for non-attendtmce at 
church. They being unable to pay the fine, the 
General Court issued an order empowering 
" the Treasurer of the County to sell the said 
persons to any of the English nation of Virginia 
or Barbadoes, to answer said fines." An at- 
tempt was made to carry this order into execu- 
tion, but no shipmaster was found willing to 
convey them to the West Indies. 

To the God of all sure mercies let my bless- 
ing rise to-day, 

From the scoffer and the cruel He hath 
plucked the spoil away ; 

Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the 
faithful three. 

And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set 
His handmaid free ! 

Last night I saw the sunset melt through 
my prison bars, 

Last night across my damp earth-floor fell 
the pale gleam of stars ; 

In the coldness and the darkness all through 
the long night-time, 

My grated casement whitened with au- 
tumn's early rime. 

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour 

crept by ; 
Star after star looked palely in and sank 

adown the sky ; 
No sound amid night's stillness, save that 

which seemed to be 
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses 

of the sea ; 



CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK 



All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that 
on the morrow 

The ruler and the cruel priest would mock 
me in my sorrow, 

Dragged to their place of market, and bar- 
gained for and sold, 

Like a lamb before the shambles, like a 
heifer from the fold ! 

Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, — 

the shrinking and the shame ; 
And the low voice of the Tempter like 

whispers to me came : 
"Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the 

wicked murmur said, 
" Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold 

earth thy maiden bed ? 

" Where be the smiling faces, and voices 

soft and sweet. 
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the 

pleasant street ? 
Where be the youths whose glances, the 

summer Sabbath through. 
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy 

father's pew ? 

" Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra ? — Be- 
think thee with what mirth 

Thy happy schoolmates gather around the 
warm, bright hearth ; 

How the crimson shadows tremble on fore- , 
heads white and fair, 

On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in 
golden hair. 

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, 
not for thee kind words are spoken, 

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods 
by laughing boys are broken ; 

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy 
lap are laid. 

For thee no flowers of autumn the youth- 
ful hunters braid. 

" weak, deluded maiden ! — by crazy 
fancies led. 

With wild and raving railers an evjl path 
to tread ; 

To leave a wholesome worship, and teach- 
ing pure and sound, 

And mate with maniac women, loose- 
haired and sackcloth bound, — 

" Mad scoflPers of the priesthood, who mock 
at things divine, 



Who rail against the piUpit, and holy 
bread and wine ; 

Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and 
from the pillory lame. 

Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glory- 
ing in their shame. 

" And what a fate awaits thee ! — a sadly 

toiling slave. 
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of 

bondage to the grave ! 
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in 

hopeless thrall, 
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn 

of all ! ■" 

Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble 

Nature's fears 
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of 

unavailing tears, 
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and 

strove in silent prayer, 
To feel, O Helper of the weak ! that Thou 

indeed wert there ! 

I thought of Paul and Silas, within Phi- 

lippi's cell. 
And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the 

prison shackles fell. 
Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an 

angel's robe of white, 
And to feel a blessed presence invisible to 

sight. 

Bless the Lord for all his mercies ! — for 

the peace and love I felt, 
Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my 

spirit melt ; 
When " Get behind me, Satan ! " was the 

language of my heart, 
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his 

doubts depart. 

Slow broke the gray cold morning ; again 
the sunshine fell. 

Flecked with the shade of bar and grate 
within my lonely cell ; 

The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and up- 
ward from the street 

Came careless laugh and idle word, and 
tread of passing feet. 

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my 

door was open cast, 
And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the 

long street I passed ; 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



I heard the murmur round me, and felt, 

but dared not see. 
How, from every door and window, the 

people gazed on me. 

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame 
burned upon my cheek, 

Swam earth and sky around me, my trem- 
bling limbs grew weak: 

" O Lord ! support thy handmaid ; and 
from her soul cast out 

The fear of man, which brings a snare, 
the weakness and the doubt." 

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a 

cloud in morning's breeze, 
And a low deep voice within me seemed 

whispering words like these : 
" Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy 

heaven a brazen wall. 
Trust still His loving-kindness whose 

power is over all." 

We paused at length, where at my feet 

the sunlit waters broke 
On glaring reacli of shining beach, and 

shingly wall of rock ; 
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard 

clear lines on high, 
Tracing with rope and slender spar their 

network on the sky. 

And there were ancient citizens, cloak- 
wrapped and grave and cold, 

And grim and stout sea-captains with 
faces bronzed and old. 

And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel 
clerk at hand. 

Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler 
of the land. 

And poisoning with his evil words the 
rider's ready ear, 

The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with 
laugh and scoff and jeer ; 

It stirred my soul, and from my lips the 
seal of silence broke. 

As if through woman's weakness a warn- 
ing spirit spoke. 

I cried, " The Lord rebuke thee, thou 

smiter of the meek, 
Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler 

of the weak ! 
Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, — go 

turn the prison lock 



Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou 
wolf amid the flock ! " 

Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and 

with a deeper red 
O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the 

flush of anger spread ; 
"Good people," quoth the white-lipped 

priest, " heed not her words so wild, 
Her Master speaks within her, — the Devil 

owns his child ! " 

But gray heads shook, and young brows 

knit, the while tlie sheriff read 
That law the wicked rulers against the poor 

have made, 
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol 

priesthood bring 
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful 

offering. 

Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, 
turning, said, — 

" Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take 
this Quaker maid ? 

In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Vir- 
ginia's shore, 

You may hold her at a higher price than 
Indian girl or Moor." 

Grim and silent stood the captains ; and 

when again he cried, 
" Speak out, my worthy seamen ! " — no 

voice, no sign replied ; 
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and 

kind words met my ear, — 
"God bless thee, and preserve thee, my 

gentle girl and dear ! " 

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a 

pitying friend was nigh, — 
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it 

in his eye ; 
And when again the sheriff spoke, that 

voice, so kind to me. 
Growled back its stormy answer like the 

roaring of the sea, — 

" Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack 

with coins of Spanish gold, 
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the 

roomage of her liold. 
By the living God who made me ! — I 

would sooner in your bay 
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear 

this child away ! " 



THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD 



" Well answered, worthy captain, shaiue on 

their cruel laws ! " 
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud 

the people's just applause. 
" Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of 

old, 
Shall we see the poor and righteous again 

for silver sold?" 

I looked on haughty Endicott ; with wea- 
pon half-way drawn, 

Swept round the throng his lion glare of 
bitter hate and scorn ; 

Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned 
in silence back. 

And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode 
murmuring in his track. 

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bit- 
terness of soul ; 

Thrice smote his staif upon the ground, 
and crushed his parchment roll. 

" Good friends," he said, " since both have 
fled, the ruler and the priest. 

Judge ye, if from their further work I be 
not well released." 

Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, 
swept round the silent bay, 

As, with kind words and kinder looks, he 
bade me go my way ; 

For He who turns the courses of the stream- 
let of the glen. 

And the river of great waters, had turned 
the hearts of men. 

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed 

changed beneath my eye, 
A holier wonder round me rose the blue 

walls of the sky, 
A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream 

and woodland lay. 
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the 

waters of the bay. 

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life ! to Him 

all praises be. 
Who from the hands of evil men hath set 

his handmaid free ; 
All praise to Him before whose power the 

mighty are afraid, 
Who takes the crafty in the snare which 

for the poor is laid ! 

Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's 
twilight calm 



Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth 

the grateful psalm ; 
Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did 

the saints of old. 
When of the Lord's good angel the rescued 

Peter told. 

And weep and howl, ye evil priests and 

mighty men of wrong, 
The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay 

His hand upon the strong. 
Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging 

hour ! 
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to 

raven and devour ! 

But let the humble ones arise, the poor in 

heart be glad. 
And let the mourning ones again with 

robes of praise be clad. 
For He who cooled the furnace, and 

smoothed the stormy wave. 
And tamed the Clialdean lions, is mighty 

still to save ! 



THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD 

The following' ballad is founded Tipon one of 
the marvellous leg-ends connected with the fa- 
mous General M , of Hampton, New Hamp- 
shire, who was reg-arded by his neighbors as a 
Yankee Faust, in league with the adversary. 
I give the story, as I heard it when a child, 
from a venerable family visitant. 

Dark the halls, and cold the feast. 
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest. 
All is over, all is done, 
Twain of yesterday are one ! 
Blooming girl and manhood gray, 
Autmiin in the arms of May I 

Hushed within and hushed without, 
Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout ; 
Dies the bonfire on the hill ; 
All is dark and all is still. 
Save the starlight, save the breeze 
Moaning through the graveyard trees ; 
And the great sea-waves below. 
Pulse of the midnight beating slow. 

From the brief dream of a bride 
She hath wakened, at his side. . 
With half-uttered sliriek and start, — 
Feels she not his beating heart ? 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And the pressure of his arm, 

And his breathing near and warm ? 

Lightly from the bridal bed 
Springs that fair dishevelled head, 
And a feeling, new, intense, 
Half of shame, half innocence, 
Maiden fear and wonder speaks 
Through her lips and changing cheeks. 

From the oaken mantel glowing, 
Faintest light the lamp is throwing 
On the mirror's antique mould, 
High-backed chair, and wainscot old, 
And, through faded curtains stealing, 
.His dark sleeping face revealing. 

Listless lies the strong man there. 
Silver-streaked his careless hair- ; 
Lips of love have left no trace 
On that hard and haughty face ; 
And that forehead's knitted thought 
Love's soft hand hath not unwrought. 

" Yet," she sighs, " he loves me well, 
More than these calm lips will tell. 
Stooping to my lowly state, 
He hath made me rich and great. 
And I bless him, though he be 
Hard and stern to all save me ! " 

While she speaketh, falls the light 
O'er her fingers small and white ; 
Gold and gem, and costly ring 
Back the timid lustre fling, — 
Love's selectest gifts, and rare, 
His proud hand had fastened there. 

Gratefully she marks the glow 
From those tapering lines of snow ; 
Fondly o'er the sleeper bending, 
His black hair with golden blending, 
In her soft and light caress. 
Cheek and lip together press. 

Ha ! — that start of horror ! why 
That wild stare and wilder cry. 
Full of terror, fidl of pain ? 
Is there madness in her brain ? 
Hark ! that gasping, hoarse and low, 
" Spare me, — spare me, — let me go ! 

God have mercy ! — icy cold 
Spectral hands her own enfold, 
Drawmg silently from them 



Love's fair gifts of gold and gem. 
" Waken ! save me ! " still as death 
At her side he slumbereth. 

Ring and bracelet all are gone. 
And that ice-cold hand withdrawn ; 
But she hears a murmur low. 
Full of sweetness, full of woe, 
Half a sigh and half a moan : 
" Fear not ! give the dead her own ! " 

Ah ! — the dead wife's voice she knows ! 

That cold hand whose pressure froze, 

Once in warmest life had borne 

Gem and band her own hath worn. 

" Wake thee ! wake thee ! " Lo, his eyes 

Open with a didl surprise. 

In his arms the strong man folds her. 
Closer to his breast he holds her ; 
Trembling limbs his own are meeting. 
And he feels her heart's quick beating : 
" Nay, my dearest, why this fear ? " 
" Hush ! " she saith, " the dead is here ! " 



" Nay, a dream, — an idle 

But before the lamp's pale gleam 

Tremblingly her hand she raises. 

There no more the diamond blazes, 

Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold, — 

" Ah ! " she sighs, " her hand was cold ! " 

Broken words of cheer he saith. 

But his dark lip quivereth, 

And as o'er the past he thinketh, 

From his young wife's arms he shrinketh : 

Can those soft arms round him lie, 

Underneath liis dead wife's eye ? 

She her fair young head can rest 

Sootlied and childlike on his breast, 

And in trustful innocence 

Draw new strength and courage thence ; 

He, the proud man, feels within 

But the cowardice of sin ! 

She can murmur in her thought 
Simple prayers her mother taught, 
And His blessed angels call. 
Whose great love is over all ; 
He, alone, in prayerless pride. 
Meets the dark Past at her side ! 

One, who living shrank with dread 
From his look, or word, or tread. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



23 



Unto whom her early grave 
Was as freedom to the slave, 
Moves him at this midnight hour, 
With the dead's unconscious power ! 

Ah, the dead, the unforgot ! 

From their solemn homes of thought. 

Where the cypress shadows blend 

Darkly over foe and friend, 

Or in love or sad rebuke. 

Back upon the living look. 

And the tenderest ones and weakest. 
Who their wrongs have borne the meekest, 
Lifting from those dark, still places. 
Sweet and sad-remembered faces, 
O'er the guilty hearts behind 
An unwitting triumph find. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 

Wmnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sa- 
chem of Saugais, married a daughter of Passa- 
conaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 
1662. The weddmg- took place at Peimacook 
(now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed 
with a great feast. According to the usages of 
the chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select num- 
ber of his men to accompany the newly mar- 
ried couple to the dwelling of the husband, 
where in turn there was another great feast. 
Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit ex- 
pressing a desire to visit her father's house 
was permitted to go, accompanied by a brave 
escort of her husband's chief men. But when 
she wished to return, her father sent a mes- 
senger to Saugus, informing her husband, and 
asking him to come and take her away. He 
retiu-ned for answer that he had escorted his 
wife to her father's house in a style that be- 
came a chief, and that now if she wished to 
return, her father must send her back, in the 
same way. This Passaeonaway refused to do, 
and it is said that here terminated the connec- 
tion of his daughter with the Saugus chief. — 
Vide Morton's New Canaan. 

We had been wandering for many days 
Tlrrough the rough northern country. We 

had seen 
The simset, with its bars of purple cloud. 
Like a new heaven, shine upward from the 

lake 
Of Winnepiseogee ; and had felt 
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles 
Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips 



Of the bright waters. We had checked our 

steeds, 
Silent with wonder, where the mountain 

wall 
Is piled to heaven ; and, through the narrow 

rift 
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet 
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar. 
Where noonday is as twilight, and the 

wind 
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan 
Of forests and of far-oif waterfalls. 
We had looked upward where the summer 

sky, 

Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the 

sun. 
Sprung its blue arch above the abutting 

crags 
O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land 
Beyond the wall of mountains. We had 

passed 
The high source of the Saco ; and bewil- 
dered 
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal 

Hills, ^ 

Had heard above us, like a voice in the 

cloud, 
The horn of Fabyan sounding ; and atop 
Of old Agiooehook had seen the mountains 
Piled to the northward, shagged with 

wood, and thick 
As meadow mole-hills, — the far sea of 

Casco, 
A white gleam on the horizon of the east ; 
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and 

hills ; 
Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kear- 

sarge 
Lifting his granite forehead to the sun ! 

And we had rested underneath the oaks 
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires 

are shaken 
By the perpetual beating of the falls 
Of the wild Aramonoosuc. We had tracked 
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung 
By beechen shadows, whitening down its 

rocks. 
Or lazily gliding through its intervals. 
From waving rye-fields sending up the 

gleam 
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon 
Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, 
Like a great Indian camp-fire ; and its 

beams 



24 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



At midnight spanning with a bridge of 

silver 
The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls. 

There were five souls of us whom travel's 

chance 
Had thrown together in these wild north 

hills : 
A city lawyer, for a month escaping 
From his dull office, where the weary eye 
Saw only liot brick walls and close thronged 

streets ; 
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see 
Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to 

take 
Its chances all as godsends ; and his brother, 
Pale from long jnilpit studies, yet retaining 
The warmth and freshness of a genial heart, 
Whose mirror of the beautiful and true. 
In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed 
By dust of theologic strife, or breath 
Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore ; 
Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking 
The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers. 
Sweet human faces, white clouds of the 

noon, 
Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy 

leaves, 
And tenderest raoonrise. 'T was, in truth, 

a study, 
To mark his spirit, alternating between 
A decent and professional gravity 
And an irreverent mirthf ulness, which often 
Laughed in the face of his divinity, 
Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite un- 

shrined 
The oracle, and for the pattern priest 
Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious 

merchant. 
To whom the soiled sheet found in Craw- 
ford's inn. 
Giving the latest news of city stocks 
And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning 
Than the great presence of the awful 

mountains 
Glorified by the sunset ; and his daughter, 
A delicate flower on whom had blown too 

long 
Those evil winds, which, sweeping from 

the ice 
And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, 
Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts 

Bay, 
With the same breath which stirs Spring's 

opening leaves 



And lifts her half-formed flowei'-bell on its 

stem. 
Poisoning our seaside atmosphere. 

It chanced 
That as we turned upon our homeward 

way, 
A drear northeastern storm came howling 

up 
The valley of the Saco ; and that girl 
Who had stood with us upon Mount Wash- 
ington, 
Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which 

whirled 
In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle. 
Who had joined our gay trout-fisliing in the 

streams 
Which lave that giant's feet ; whose laugh 

was heard 
Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze 
Which swelled our sail ainidst the lake's 

green islands. 
Shrank from its harsh, dull breath, and 

visibly drooped 
Like a flower in the frost. So, in that 

quiet inn 
Which looks from Conway on the moun- 
tains piled 
Heavily against the horizon of the north, 
Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our 

home : 
And while the mist hung over dripping 

hills. 
And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all 

day long 
Beat their sad music upon roof and pane. 
We strove to cheer our gentle invalid. 

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm 
Went angling down the Sacft, and, returning, 
Recounted his adventures and mishaps ; 
Gave us the history of his scaly clients, 
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations 
Of barbarous law Latin, passages 
From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and 

fresh 
As the flower-skirted streams of Stafford- 
shire, 
Where, under aged trees, the southwest 

wind 
Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, 

white hair 
Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told. 
Our youthful candidate forsook his se» 
mous, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



His commentaries, articles and creeds, 
For the fair page of hiunau loveliness, 
The missal of young hearts, whose sacred 

text 
Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles. 
He sang the songs she loved ; and in his 

low. 
Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page 
Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines 
Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs. 
Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature, 
Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal 

Mount 
Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing 
From the green hills, immortal in his lays. 
And for myself, obedient to her wish, 
I searched our landlord's proffered library : 
A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice 

wood pictures 
Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them ; 
Watts' unmelodious psalms ; Astrology's 
Last home, a musty pile of almanacs. 
And an old chronicle of border wars 
And Indian history. And, as I read 
A story of the marriage of the Chief 
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo, 
Daughter of Pjissaconaway, who dwelt 
In the old time upon the Merrimae, 
Our fair one, in the playful exercise 
Of her prerogative, — the right divine 
Of youth and beauty, — bade us versify 
The legend, and with ready pencil sketched 
Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning 
To each his part, and barring our excuses 
With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers 
Whose voices still are heard in the Romance 
Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks 
Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling 
The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled 
From stately Florence, we rehearsed our 

rhymes 
To their fair auditor, and shared by turns 
Her kind approval and her playful cen- 
sure. 

It may be that these fragments owe alone 
To the fair setting of their circum- 
stances, — 
The associations of time, scene, and audi- 
ence, — 
Their place amid the pictures which fill up 
The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust 
That some, who sigh, while wandering in 

thought. 
Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world, 



That our broad land, — our sea-like lakes 

and momitains 
Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung 
By forests which have known no other 

cliange 
For ages than the budding and the fall 
Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those 
Which the old poets sang of, — should but 

figure 
On the apocryphal chart of speculation 
As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the 

privileges. 
Rights, and appurtenances, which make up 
A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown, 
To beautiful tradition ; even their names, 
Whose melody yet lingers like the last 
Vibration of the red man's requiem. 
Exchanged for syllables significant, 
Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly 
Upon this effort to call up the ghost 
Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear 
To the responses of the questioned Shade. 



I. THE MERRIMAC 

O child of that white-crested mountain 

whose springs 
Gush forth iu the shade of the cliff-eagle's 

wings, 
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy 

wild waters shine. 
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing 

through the dwarf pine ; 

From that eloud-ciu'taiiaed cradle so cold 

and so lone. 
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother 

of stone. 
By hills hung with forests, through vales 

wide and free. 
Thy mountain - born brightness glanced 

down to the sea ! 

No bridge arched thy waters save that 

' where the trees 
Stretched their long arms above thee and 

kissed in the breeze : 
No sound save the lapse of the waves on 

thy shores. 
The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars. 

Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's 

fall 
Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall, 



26 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Thy Nashua meadows lay green and un- 
shorn, 

And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled 
with corn. 

But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than 

these, 
And greener its grasses and taller its trees, 
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had 

rung, 
Or the mower his scythe in the meadows 

had swung. 

In their sheltered repose looking out from 
the wood 

The bark-builded wigwams of Pemiacook 
stood ; 

There glided the corn-dance, the council- 
fire shone, 

And against the red war-post the hatchet 
was thrown. 

There the old smoked in silence their pipes, 

and the young 
To the pike and the white-perch their baited 

lines flung ; 
There tlie boy shaped his arrows, and there 

the shy maid 
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright 

wampum braid. 

O Stream of the Mountains ! if answer of 

thine 
Could rise from thy waters to question of 

mine, 
Methinks through the din of thy thronged 

banks a moan 
Of sorrow would swell for the days which 

have gone. 

Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and 

the wheel. 
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of 

steel ; 
But that old voice of waters, of bird and of 

breeze. 
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of 

trees ! 



II. THE BASHABA 

Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, 
And, turning from familiar sight and 
sound, 



Sadly and full of reverence let us cast 
A glance upon Tradition's shadowy 
groimd, 
Led by the few pale lights which, glimmer- 
ing round 
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem 
dying fast ; 
And that which history gives not to the eye, 
The faded coloring of Time's tapestry. 
Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, 
supply. 

Roof of bark and walls of pine, 
Through whose chinks the sunbeams 

shine, 
Tracing many a golden line 

On the ample floor within ; 
Wliere, upon that earth-floor stark. 
Lay the gaudy mats of bark. 
With the bear's hide, rough and dark, 

And the red-deer's skin. 

Window-tracery, small and slight. 
Woven of the willow white. 
Lent a dimly checkered light ; 

And the night-stars glimmered down, 
Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke. 
Slowly through an ojjening broke, 
In the low roof, ribbed with oak. 

Sheathed with hemlock brown. 

Gloomed behind the changeless shade 
By the solemn pine-wood made ; 
Through the rugged palisade. 

In the open foreground planted, 
Glimpses came of rowers rowing. 
Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing, 
Steel-like gleams of water flowing. 

In the sunlight slanted. 

Here the mighty Bashaba 

Held his long-unquestioned sway, 

From the White Hills, far away, 

To the great sea's sounding shore ; 
Chief of chiefs, his regal word 
All the river Sachems heard. 
At his call the war-dance stirred, 

Or was still once more. 

There his spoils of chase and war, 
Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw, 
Panther's skin and eagle's claw. 
Lay beside his axe and bow ; 
And, adown the roof-pole hung, 
Loosely on a snake-skin strmig, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



In the smoke his scalp-locks swung 


As upon a marble floor. 


Grimly to and fro. 


Moves the strong man still. 


Nightly down the river going, 


Still, to such, life's elements 


Swifter was the hunter's rowing, 


With their sterner laws dispense, 


When he saw that lodge-fire glowing 


And the chain of consequence 


O'er the waters still and red ; 


Broken in their pathway lies ; 


And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter, 


Time and change their vassals making, 


And she drew her blanket tighter, 


Flowers from icy pillows waking, 


As, with quicker step and lighter, 


Tresses of the sunrise shaking 


From that door she fled. 


Over midnight skies. 


For that chief had magic skill, 


Still, to th' earnest soul, the sim 


And a Pauisee's dark will, 


Rests on towered Gibeon, 


Over powers of good and ill. 


And the moon of Ajalon 


Powers which bless and powers which 


Lights the battle-grounds of life ; 


ban ; 


To his aid the strong reverses 


Wizard lord of Pennacook, 


Hidden powers and giant forces, 


Chiefs upon their war-path shook. 


And the high stars, in their courses, 


When they met the steady look 


IVIingle in his strife ! 


Of that wise dark man. 




Tales of him the gray squaw told, 


III. THE DAUGHTER 


When the winter night-wind cold 




Pierced her blanket's thickest fold. 


The soot-black brows of men, the yell 


And her fire burned low and small. 


Of women thronging round the bed, 


Till the very child abed, 


The tinkling charm of ring and shell, 


Drew its bear-skin over head. 


The Powah whispering o'er the dead ! 


Shrinking from the pale lights shed 


All these the Sachem's home had known. 


On the trembling waU. 


When, on her journey long and wild 




To the dim World of Souls, alone, 


All the subtle spirits hiding 


In her young beauty passed the mother of 


Under earth or wave, abiding 


his child. 


In the caverned rock, or riding 




Misty clouds or morning breeze ; 


Three bow-shots from the Sachem's 


Every dark intelligence. 


dwelling 


Secret soul, and influence 


They laid her in the walnut shade. 


Of all things which outward sense 


Where a green hillock gently swelling 


Feels, or hears, or sees, — 


Her fitting mound of burial made. 




There trailed the vine in summer hours. 


These the wizard's skill confessed, 


The tree-perched squirrel dropped his 


At his bidding banned or blessed. 


Sheld- 


Stormful woke or lulled to rest 


on velvet moss and pale-hued flowers. 


Wind and cloud, and fire and flood ; 


Woven with leaf and spray, the softened 


Burned for him the drifted snow, 


sunshine fell ! 


Bade through ice fresh lilies blow, 




And the leaves of summer grow 


The Indian's heart is hard and cold. 


Over winter's wood ! 


It closes darkly o'er its care, 




And formed in Nature's sternest mould, 


Not untrue that tale of old ! 


Is slow to feel, and strong to bear. 


Now, as then, the wise and bold 


The war-paint on the Sachem's face. 


All the powers of Nature hold 


Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red. 


Subject to their kingly will ; 


And still, in battle or in chase. 


From the wondering crowds ashore, 


Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his 


Treading life's wild waters o'er. 


foremost tread. 



28 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Yet when her name was heard no more, 
And when the robe her mother gave. 
And small, light moccasin she wore, 
Had slowly wasted on her grave. 
Unmarked of him the dark maids sped 

Their sunset dance and moonlit play ; 
No other shared liis lonely bed, 
No other fair young head upon his bosom 
lay. 

A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes 

The tempest-smitten tree receives 
From one small root the sap which climbs 
Its topmost spray and crowning leaves, 
So from his child the Sachena drew 
A life of Love and Hope, and felt 
His cold and rugged nature through 
The softness and the warmth of her young 
being melt. 

A laugh which in the woodland rang 

Bemocking April's gladdest bird, — 
A light and graceful form which sprang 
To meet him when his step was 
heard, — 
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark. 

Small fingers stringing bead and shell 
Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark, — 
With these the household-god had graced 
his wigwam well. 

Child of the forest ! strong and free. 

Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair. 
She swam the lake or climbed the tree. 

Or struck the flying bird in air. 
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon 
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's 
way ; 
And dazzling in the summer noon 
The blade of her light oar threw off its 
shower of spray ! 

Unknown to her the rigid rule. 

The dull restraint, the chiding frown. 
The weary torture of the school, 

The taming of wild nature down. 
Her only lore, the legends told 

Around the hunter's fire at night ; 
Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled. 
Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, un- 
questioned in her sight. 

Unknown to her the subtle skill 

With which the artist-eye can trace 
In rock and tree and lake and hill 



The outlines of divinest grace ; 
Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest, 

Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway ; 
Too closely on her mother's breast 
To note her smiles of love the child of Na- 
ture lay ! 

It is enough for such to be 

Of common, natural things a part, 
To feel, with bird and stream and tree, 
The pulses of the same great heart ; 
But we, from Nature long exiled, 

In our cold homes of Art and Thought 
Grieve like the stranger-tended child. 
Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees 
but feels them not. 

The garden rose may richly bloom 
In cultured soil and genial air. 

To cloud the light of Fashion's room 
Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair ; 

In lonelier grace, to sun and dew 
The sweetbrier on the hillside shows 

Its single leaf and fainter hue, 
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister 



Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo 

Their mingling shades of joy and ill 
The instincts of her nature threw ; 

The savage was a woman still. 
Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes, 

Heart-colored prophecies of life. 
Rose on the ground of her young dreams 
The light of a new home, the lover and the 
wife. 



IV. THE WEDDING 

Cool and dark fell the autumn night. 

But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with 

light, 
For down from its roof, by green withes 

hung, 
Flaring and smoking the pine-l;nots swung. 

And along the river great wood-fires 
Shot into the night their long, red spires. 
Showing behind the tall, dark wood. 
Flashing before on the sweeping flood. 

In the changeful wind, with shimmer and 

shade. 
Now high, now low, that firelight played, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



29 



On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, 
On gliding water and still canoes. 

The trapper that night on Turee's brook, 
And the weary fisher on Contoocook, 
Saw over the marshes, and through the pine, 
And down on the river, the dance-lights 
shine. 

For the Sangus Sachem had come to woo 
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, 
And laid at her father's feet that night 
His softest furs and wampum white. 

From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast 
The river Sagamores came to the feast ; 
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook 
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. 

They came from Snnapee's shore of rock. 
From the snowy sources of Snooganock, 
And from rough Coiis whose thick woods 

shake 
Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake. 

From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass. 
Wild as his home, came Chepewass ; 
And the Keenomps of the hills which throw 
Their shade on the Smile of Manito. 

With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, 
Glowing with paint came old and young, 
In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed. 
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made. 

Bird of the air and beast of the field, 
All which the woods and the waters yield. 
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, 
Garnished and graced that banquet wild. 

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large 
From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge ; 
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook, 
And salmon speared in the Contoocook ; 

Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick 
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic ; 
And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught 
From the banks of Sondagardee brought ; 

Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, 
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills 

shaken. 
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog, 
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog : 



And, drawn from that great stone vase 

which stands 
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands, 
Garnished with spoons of shell and horn, 
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn. 

Thus bird of the air and beast of the field. 
All which the woods and the waters yield, 
Furnished in that olden day 
The bridal feast of the Bashaba. 

And merrily when that feast was done 
On the fire-lit green the dance begun, 
With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum 
Of old men beating the Indian drum. 

Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flow- 

And red arms tossing and black eyes glow- 

Now in the light and now in the shade 
Around the fires the dancers played. 

The step was quicker, the song more shrill, 
And the beat of the small drums louder still 
Whenever within the circle drew 
The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo. 

The moons of forty winters had shed 
Their snow upon that chieftain's head, 
And toil and care and battle's chance 
Had seamed his hard, dark countenance. 

A fawn beside the bison grim, — 
Why turns the bride's fond eye on him, 
In whose cold look is naught beside 
The triumph of a sullen pride ? 

Ask why the graceful grape entwines 
The rough oak with her arm of vines ; 
And why the gray rock's rugged cheek 
The soft lips of the mosses seek : 

Why, with wise instinct. Nature seems 
To harmonize her wide extremes, 
Linking the stronger with the weak, 
The haughty with the soft and meek I 



V. THE NEW HOME 

A wild and broken landscape, spiked with 
firs, 
Roughening the bleak horizon's northern 
edge ; 



30 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hem- 
lock spurs 
And sharp, gray splinters of the wind- 
swept ledge 
Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose, 
Where the cold rim of the sky smik down 
upon the snows. 

And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched 

away. 
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree, 
O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a 

day 
Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck 

sea ; 
And faint with distance came the stifled 

roar, 
The melancholy lapse of waves on that low 

shore. 

No cheerful village with its mingling 

smokes, 
No laugh of children wrestling in the 

snow, 
No camp-fire blazing through the hillside 

oaks. 
No fishers kneeling on the ice below ; 
Yet midst all desolate things of sound and 

view, 
Through the long winter moons smiled 

dark-eyed Weetamoo. 

Her heart had found a home ; and freshly 

all 
Its beautifid affections overgrew 
Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite 

wall 
Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening 

dew 
And warm bright sun, the love of that 

young wife 
Found on a hard cold breast the dew and 

warmth of life. 

The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy 
shore, 
The long, dead level of the marsh be- 
tween, 

A coloring of unreal beauty wore 

Tlirough the soft golden mist of young 
love seen. 

For o'er those hills and from that dreary 
plain. 

Nightly she welcomed home her hunter 
chief again. 



No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of 
feeling 
Repaid her welcoming smile and parting 
kiss. 

No fond and playful dalliance half con- 
cealing. 
Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness ; 

But, in their stead, the warrior's settled 
pride, 

And vanity's pleased smile with homage 
satisfied. 

Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone 

Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side ; 
That he whose fame to her young ear had 

flown 
Now looked upon her proudly as his 

bride ; 
That he whose name the Mohawk trembling 

heard 
Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look 

or word. 

For she had learned the maxims of her 
race. 
Which teach the woman to become a 
slave. 

And feel herself the pardonless disgrace 
Of love's fond weakness in the wise and 
brave, — 

The scandal and the shame which they 
incur. 

Who give to woman all which man re- 
quires of her. 

So passed the winter moons. The sun at 

last 
Broke link by link the frost chain of the 

rills, 
And the warm breathings of the southwest 

passed 
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills ; 
The gray and desolate marsh grew green 

once more. 
And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell 

round the Sachem's door. 

Then from far Pennacook swift runners 
came, 
W^ith gift and greeting for the Saugus 
chief ; 
Beseeching him in the great Sachem's 
name. 
That, with the coming of the flower and 
leaf, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



31 



The song of birds, the warm, breeze and 
the rain, 

Young Weetanioo might greet her lonely- 
sire again. 

And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together, 
And a grave council in his wigwam met, 
Solemn and brief in words, considering 
whether 
The rigid rules of forest etiquette 
Permitted Weetamoo once more to look 
Upon her father's face and green-banked 
Pennacook, 

With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong 
water, 
The forest sages pondered, and at length 
Concluded in a body to escort her 

Up to her father's home of pride and 
strength. 
Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense 
Of Winnepurkit's power and regal conse- 
quence. 

So through old woods which Aukeetamit's 
hand 
A soft and many-shaded greenness lent. 
Over high breezy hills, and meadow land 
Yellow with flowers, the wild procession 
went. 
Till, rolling down its wooded banks between, 
A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merri- 
mac was seen. 

The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn. 

The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores. 
Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed- 
corn. 
Young children peering through the 
wigwam doors. 
Saw with delight, surrounded by her train 
Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo 
again. 



VI. AT PENNACOOK 

The hills are dearest which our childish 

feet 
Have climbed the earliest ; and the streams 

most sweet 
Are ever those at which our young lips 

drank 
Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy 

bank. 



Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's 

hearth-light 
Shines round the helmsman plunging ^ 

through the night ; 
And still, with inward eye, the traveller 

sees 
In close, dark, stranger streets his native 

trees. 

The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly 

fanned 
By breezes whispering of his native land, 
And on the stranger's dim and dying eye 
The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood 

lie. 

Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more 
A child upon her father's wigwam floor ! 
Once more with her old fondness to beguile 
From his cold eye the strange light of a 
smile. 

The long, bright days of summer swiftly 

passed. 
The dry leaves whirled in autumn's rising 

blast. 
And evening cloud Snd whitening sunrise 

rime 
Told of the coming of the winter-time. 

But vainly looked, the while, young Weeta- 
moo 

Down the dark river for her chief's canoe ; 

No dusky messenger from Saugus brought 

The grateful tidings which the young wife 
sought. 

At length a runner from her father sent, 
To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went ; 
" Eagle of Saugus, — in the woods the dove 
Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of 
love." 

But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside 
In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride ; 
"I bore her as became a chieftain's 

daughter. 
Up to her home beside the gliding water. 

" If now no more a mat for her is found 
Of all which line her father's wigwam 

round. 
Let Pennacook call out his warrior train. 
And send her back with wampum gifts 

again." 



32 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The baffled runner turned upon his track, 
Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back. 
" Dog of the Marsh," cried Peunacook, 

" no more 
Sliall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor. 

" Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to 

spread 
The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed ; 
Son of a fish-hawk ! let him dig his clams 
For some vile daughter of the Agawams, 

" Or coward Nipraucks ! may his scalp dry 

black 
In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back." 
He shook his clenched hand towards the 

ocean wave, 
While hoarse assent his listening council 

gave. 

Alas, poor bride ! can thy grim sire impart 
His iron hardness to thy woman's heart ? 
Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone 
For love denied and life's warm beauty 
flown? 

On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the 

snow 
Hung its white wreaths ; with stifled voice 

and low 
The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er- 

crossed, 
Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost. 

And many a moon in beauty newly born 
Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn, 
Or, from the east, across her azure field 
Rolled the -wide brightness of her full-orbed 
shield. 

Yet Winnepurkit came not, — on the mat 
Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat ; 
And he, the while, in Western woods afar, 
Urged the long chase, or trod the path of 
war. 

Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a 

chief ! 
Waste not on him the sacredness of grief ; 
Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own. 
His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone. 

What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights. 
The storm-worn watcher through long hunt- 
ing nights, 



Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak dis« 
tress, 

Her home-bound grief and pining loneli- 
ness ? 

VII. THE DEPARTURE 

The wild March rains had fallen fast and 

long 
The snowy mountains of the North among, 
Making each vale a watercourse, each hill 
Bright with the cascade of some new-made 

rill. 

Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the 

rain, 
Heaved underneath by the swollen current's 

strain, 
The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimac 
Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track. 

On that strong turbid water, a small boat 
Guided by one weak hand was seen to float ; 
Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore, 
Too early voyager with too frail an oar ! 

Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide, 
The thick, huge ice -blocks threatening 

either side, 
Tlie foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view. 
With arrowy swiftness sped that light 

canoe. 

Tlie trapper, moistening his moose's meat 
On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet, 
Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled 

stream ; 
Slept he, or waked he ? was it truth or 

dream ? 

The straining eye bent fearfully before, 
The small hand clenching on the useless oar. 
The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er the 

water — 
He knew them all — woe for the Sachem's 

daughter ! 

Sick and aweary of her lonely life, 
Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife 
Had left her mother's grave, her father's 

door, 
To seek the wigwam of her chief once more. 

Down the white rapids like a sear leaf 
whirled, 



BARCLAY OF URY 



33 



On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled, 
Empty and broken, circled the canoe 
In the vexed pool below — but where was 
Weetamoo ? 



VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN 

The Dark eye has left us, 

The Spring-bird has flown ; 
On the pathway of spirits 
She wanders alone. 
The soug of the wood-dove has died on our 

shore : 
Mat wotick kunna-monee ! 



YTs hear it no 



O dark water Spirit ! 

We cast on thy wave 
These furs which may never 
Hang over her grave ; 
Bear down to the lost one the robes that 

she wore : 
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We see her no 
more ! 

Of the strange land she walks in 

No Powah has told : 
It may burn with the sunshine, 
Or freeze with the cold. 
Let us give to our lost one the robes that 

she wore : 
Mat iconck kunna-monee ! We see her no 



The path she is treading 

Shall soon be our own ; 
Each gliding in shadow 
Unseen and alone ! 
In vain shall we call on the souls gone be- 
fore : 
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! They hear us 
no more ! 

O mighty Sowanna ! 

Thy gateways unfold. 
From thy wigwam of sunset 
Lift curtains of gold ! 
Take home the poor Spirit whose journey 

is o'er : 
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We see her no 
more ! 

So sang the Children of the Leaves beside 
The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide ; 



Now low, now harsh, with sob-like pause 
and swell. 

On the high wind their voices rose and 
feU. 

Nature's wild music, — sounds of wind- 
swept trees, 

The scream of birds, the wailing of the 
breeze. 

The roar of waters, steady, deep, and 
strong, — 

Mingled and murmured in that farewell 
song. 



BARCLAY OF URY 

Among the earliest converts to the doctrines 
of Friends in Scotland was Barclay of Ury, an 
old and distinguished soldier, who had fought 
under Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a 
Quaker, he became the object of persecution 
and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and 
the populace. None bore the indignities of 
the mob with greater patience and nobleness 
of sold than this once proud gentleman and 
soldier. One of his friends, on an occasion of 
uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should 
be treated so harshly in his old age who had 
been so honored before. " I find more satis- 
faction," said Barclay, "as well as honor, in 
being thus insulted for my religious principles, 
than when, a few years ago, it was usual for 
the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aber- 
deen, to meet me on thyoad and conduct me 
to public entertainment m their hall, and then 
escort me out again, to gain my favor." 

Up the streets of Aberdeen, 
By the kirk and college green, 

Rode the Laird of Ury ; 
Close behind him, close beside, 
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed. 

Pressed the mob in fury. 

Flouted him the drunken churl. 
Jeered at him the serving-girl. 

Prompt to please her master ; 
And the begging carliu, late 
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate. 

Cursed him as he passed her. 

Yet, with calm and stately mien, 
Up the streets of Aberdeen 

Came he slowly riding ; 
And, to all he saw and heard, 
Answering not with bitter word, 

Turning not for chiding. 



34 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Came a troop with broadswords swinging, 
Bits and bridles sharply ringing, 

Loose and free and froward ; 
Quoth the foremost, " Ride him down ! 
Push him ! prick him ! through the town 

Drive the Quaker coward ! " 

But from out the thickening crowd 
Cried a sudden voice and loud : 

" Barclay ! Ho ! a Barclay ! " 
And the old man at liis side 
Saw a comrade, battle tried. 

Scarred and sunburned darkly ; 

Who with ready weapon bare, 
Fronting to the troopers there, 

Cried aloud : " God save us, 
Call ye coward him who stood 
Ankle deep in Liitzen's blood. 

With the brave Gustavus ? " 

" Nay, 1 do not need thy sword, 
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord ; 

" Put it lip, I pray thee : 
Passive to His holy will, 
Trust I in my Master still. 

Even though He slay me. 

" Pledges of thy love and faith, 
Proved on many a field of death, 

Not by me are needed." 
Marvelled much that henchman bold, 
That his laird, so stAit of old, 

Now so meekly pleaded. 

" Woe 's the day ! " he sadly said, 
With a slowly shaking head. 

And a look of pity ; 
" Ury's honest lord reviled, 
Mocic of knave and sport of child, 

In his own good city ! 

" Speak the word, and, master mine, 
As we charged on Tilly's line. 

And his Walloon lancers. 
Smiting through their midst we '11 teach 
Civil look and decent speech 

To these boyish prancers ! " 

" Marvel not, mine ancient friend, 
Like beginning, like the end," 

Quoth the Laird of Ury ; 
"Is the sinful servant more 
Than his gracious Lord who bore 

Bonds and stripes in Jewry ? 



" Give me joy that in His name 
I can bear, with patient frame. 

All these vain ones offer ; 
While for them He suffeieth long. 
Shall I answer wrong with wrong, 

Scoffing with the scoffer ? 

" Happier I, with loss of all. 
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, 

With few friends to greet me, 
Than when reeve and squire were 
Riding out from Aberdeen, 

With bared heads to meet me 



" When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, 
Blessed me as I passed her door ; 

And the snooded daughter, 
Through her casement glancing down, 
Smiled on him who bore renown 

From red fields of slaughter. 

" Hard to feel the stranger's scoff. 
Hard the old friend's falling off, 

Hard to learn forgiving ; 
But the Lord His own rewards. 
And His love with theirs accords, 

Warm and fresh and living. 

" Through this dark and stormy night 
Faith beholds a feeble light 

Up the blackness streaking ; 
Knowing God's own time is best, 
In a patient hope I rest 

For the full day-breaking ! " 

So the Laird of Ury said, 
Turning slow his horse's head 

Towards the Tolbooth prison. 
Where, through iron gates, he heard 
Poor disciples of the Word 

Preach of Christ arisen ! 

Not in vain. Confessor old, 
Unto us the tale is told 

Of thy day of trial ; 
Every age on him who strays 
From its broad and beaten ways 

Pours its seven-fold vial. 

Happy he whose inward ear 
Angel comfortings can hear, 

O'er the rabble's laughter ; 
And while Hatred's fagots burn, 
Glimpses through the smoke discern 

Of the good hereafter. 



THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 



35 



Knowing this, that never yet 
Share of Truth was vainly set 

In the woild's wide fallow ; 
After hands shall sow the seed, 
After hauds from hill and mead 

Reap the harvests yellow. 

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, 
Must the moral pioneer 

From the Future borrow ; 
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, 
And, on midnight's sky of rain, 

Paint the golden morrow ! 

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 

A letter - writer from Mexico during the 
Mexican war, when detailing- some of the inci- 
dents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, 
mentioned that Mexican women were seen 
hovering near the field of death, for the pur- 
pose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. 
One poor woman was found surrounded by the 
maimed and suffering of both armies, minister- 
ing to the wants of Americans as well as Mex- 
icans with impartial tenderness. 

Speak and tell us, our Ximena, looking 
northward far away. 

O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mex- 
ican array, 

Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they 
far or come they near ? 

Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither 
rolls the storm we hear. 

" Down the hills of Angostura still the storm 

of battle rolls ; 
Blood is flowing, men are dying ; God have 

mercy on their souls ! " 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? " Over 

hill and over plain, 
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through 

the mountain rain. " 

Holy Mother ! keep our brothers ! Look, 
Ximena, look once more. 

" Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling 
darkly as before. 

Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and 
foeman, foot and horse. 

Like some wild and troubled torrent sweep- 
ing down its mountain course." 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Ah ! the 
smoke has rolled away ; 



And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down 

the ranks of gray. 
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there 

the troop of Minon wheels ; 
There the Northern horses thunder, with 

the cannon at their heels. 

" Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now retreat 

and now advance ! 
Right against the blazing cannon shivers 

Puebla's charging lance ! 
Down they go, the brave young riders ; 

horse and foot together fall ; 
Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through 

them ploughs the Northern ball." 

Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling 

fast and frightful on ! 
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has 

lost, and who has won ? 
" Alas ! alas ! I know not ; friend and foe 

together fall. 
O'er the dying rush the living : pray, my 

sisters, for them all ! 

" Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting. 

Blessed Mother, save my brain ! 
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out 

from heaps of slain. 
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding ; now 

they fall, and strive to rise ; 
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest 

they die before our eyes ! 

" O my heart's love ! O my dear one ! lay 
thy poor head on my knee ; 

Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee ? 
Canst thou hear me ? canst thou 

O my husband, brave and gentle ! my 

Bernal, look once more 
On the blessed cross before thee ! Mercy ! 

mercy I all is o'er ! " 

Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena ; lay thy 

dear one down to rest ; 
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross 

upon his breast ; 
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his 

funeral masses said ; 
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living 

ask thy aid. 

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and 
young, a soldier lay, 



36 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Torn with shot and pierced with lances, 
bleeding slow his life away ; 

But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena 
knelt, 

She saw the Northern eagle shining on his 
pistol-belt. 

With a stifled cry of horror straight she 

turned away her head ; 
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she 

back upon her dead ; 
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and 

his struggling breath of pain, 
And she raised the cooling water to his 

parching lips again. 

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed 

her hand and faintly smiled ; 
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did 

she watcli beside her child ? 
All his stranger words with meaning her 

woman's heart supplied ; 
With her kiss upon his forehead, " Mother ! " 

murmured he, and died ! 

*' A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who 
led thee forth, 

I'rom some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weep- 
ing, lonely, in the North ! " 

Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she 
laid him with her dead. 

And turned to soothe the living, and bind 
the wounds which bled. 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Like a 
cloud before the wind 

Rolls the battle down the mountains, leav- 
ing blood and death behind ; 

Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in the 
dust the wounded strive ; 

Hide your faces, holy angels ! thou 
Christ of God, forgive ! " 

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains ! let 
the cool, gray shadows fall ; 

Dying brothers, lighting demons, drop thy 
curtain over all ! 

Through the thickening winter twiliglit, 
wide apart the battle rolled. 

In its sheath the sabre rested, and the can- 
non's lips grew cold. 

But the noble Mexic women still their holy 

task pursued, 
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, 

worn and faint and lacking food. 



Over weak and suffering brothers, with a 

tender care they hung. 
And the dying foeman blessed them in a 

strange and Northern tongue. 

Not wholly lost, O Father ! is this evil 

world of ours ; 
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring 

afresh the Eden flowers ; 
From its smoking hell of battle. Love and 

Pity send their prayer. 
And still thy white-winged angels hover 

dimly in our air ! 



THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK 

" This legend [to which my attention was 
called by my friend Charles Sumner], is the 
subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, 
of which Mr. Rogers possesses the original 
sketch. The slave lies on the ground, amid a 
crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by 
all the various emotions of sympathy, rage, 
terror ; a woman, in front, with a child in her 
arms, has always been admired for the lifelike 
vivacity of her attitude and expression. The 
executioner holds up the broken implements ; 
St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to 
rush down from heaven in haste to save his 
worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this 
picture is wonderful ; the coloring, in its gor- 
geous depth and harmony, is, in Mr. Rogers's 
sketch, finer than in the picture." — Mrs. 
Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, i. 154. 

The day is closing dark and cold. 

With roaring blast and sleety showers ; 

And through the dusk the lilacs wear 
The bloom of snow, instead of flowers. 

I turn me from the gloom without, 

To ponder o'er a tale of old ; 
A legend of the age of Faith, 

By dreaming monk or abbess told. 

On Tintoretto's canvas lives 

That fancy of a loving heart. 
In graceful lines and shapes of power, 

And hues immortal as his art. 

In Provence (so the story runs) 

There lived a lord, to whom, as slave^ 

A peasant-boy of tender years 

The chance of trade or conquest gave. 

Forth-looking from the castle tower, 
Beyond the hills with almonds dark. 



KATHLEEN 



37 



The straining eye could scarce discern 
The chapel of the good St. Mark. 

And there, when bitter word or fare 
The service of the youth repaid, 

By stealth, before that holy shrine, 

For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed. 

The steed stamped at the castle gate, 
The boar-hunt sounded on the hill ; 

Why stayed the Baron from the chase. 
With looks so stern, and words so ill ? 

" Go, bind yon slave ! and let him learn, 
By scath of fire and strain of cord, 

How ill they speed who give dead saints 
The homage due their living lord ! " 

They bound him on the fearful rack. 

When, through the dungeon's vaulted 
dark. 

He saw the light of shining robes, 
Aiid knew the face of good St. Mark. 

Then sank the iron rack apart. 

The cords released their cruel clasp, 

The pincers, with their teeth of fire. 
Fell broken from the torturer's grasp. 

And lo ! before the Youth and Saint, 
Barred door and wall of stone gave 
way ; 

And up from bondage and the night 
They passed to freedom and the day ! 

O dreaming monk ! thy tale is true ; 

O painter ! true thy pencil's art ; 
In tones of hope and prophecy. 

Ye whisper to my listening heart ! 

Unheard no burdened heart's appeal 
Moans up to God's inclining ear ; 

Unheeded by his tender eye. 

Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear. 

For still the Lord alone is God ! 

The pomp and power of tyrant man 
Are scattered at his lightest breath, 

Like chaff before the winnower's fan. 

Not always shall the slave uplift 
His heavy hands to Heaven in vain. 

God's angel, like the good St. Mark, 

Comes shinmg down to break his 
chain ! 



O weary ones ! ye may not see 

Your helpers in their downward flight; 

Nor hear the sound of silver wings 

Slow beating through the hush of night ! 

But not the less gray Dothan shone. 
With sunbright watchers bending low, 

That Fear's dim eye beheld alone 
The spear-heads of the Syrian foe. 

There are, who, like the Seer of old, 
Can see the helpers God has sent. 

And how life's rugged mountain-side 
Is white with many an angel tent I 

They hear the heralds whom our Lord 
Sends down his pathway to prepare ; 

And light, from others hidden, shines 
On their high place of faith and prayer. 

Let such, for earth's despairing ones, 
Hopeless, yet longing to be free. 

Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer : 
"Lord, ope their eyes, that they may 



KATHLEEN 

This ballad was originally published in my 
prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith'' s Jour- 
nal, as the song of a wandering Milesian school- 
master, lu the seventeenth century, slavery 
in the New World was by no means confined to 
the natives of Africa. Political offenders and 
criminals were transported by the British gov- 
ernment to the plantations of Barbadoes and 
Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the 
market. Kidnapping of free and innocent 
white persons was practised to a considerable 
extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom. 

NoRAH. lay your basket down, 

And rest your weary hand, 
And come and hear me sing a song 

Of our old Ireland. 

There was a lord of Galaway, 

A mighty lord was he ; 
And he did wed a second wife, 

A maid of low degree. 

But he was old, and she was young, 

And so, in evil spite. 
She baked the black bread for his Wn, 

And fed her own with white. 



38 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



She whipped the maids and starved the 


They crept before the dead-vault door, 


kern, 


And there they all stood still ! 


And drove away tlie poor ; 




" Ah, woe is me ! " the old lord said, 


" Get up, old man ! the wake-lights shine ! " 


" I rue my bargain sore ! " 


" Ye murthering witch," quoth he. 




" So I 'm rid of your tongue, I little care 


This lord he had a daughter fair, 


If they shine for you or me." 


Beloved of old and young, 




And nightly round the shealing-fires 


" Oh, whoso brings my daughter back, 


Of her the gleeman sung. 


My gold and land shall have ! " 




Oh, then spake up his handsome page, 


" As sweet and good is young Kathleen 


" No gold nor land I crave ! 


As Eve before her fall ; " 




So sang the harper at the fair, 


" But give to me your daughter dear, 


So harped he in the hall. 


Give sweet Kathleen to me. 




Be she on sea or be she on land, 


" Oh, come to me, my daughter dear I 


I '11 bring her back to thee." 


Come sit upon my knee. 




For looking in your face, Kathleen, 


" My daughter is a lady born, 


Your mother's own I see ! " 


And you of low degree, 




But she shall be your bride the day 


He smoothed and smoothed her hair 


You bring her back to me." 


away, 
He kissed her forehead fair ; 


He sailed east, he sailed west, 


" It is my darling Mary's brow, 


And far and long sailed he. 


It is my darling's hair ! " 


Until he came to Boston town, 




Across the great salt sea. 


Oh, then spake up the angry dame, 




"Get up, get up," quoth she, 


" Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen, 


" I '11 sell ye over Ireland, 


Tlie flower of Ireland ? 


I '11 sell ye o'er the sea ! " 


Ye '11 know her by her eyes so blue, 




And by her snow-white hand ! " 


She clipped her glossy hair away. 




That none her rank might know. 


Out spake an ancient man, " I know 


She took away her gown of silk. 


The maiden whom ye mean ; 


And gave her one of tow. 


I bought her of a Limerick man, 




And she is called Kathleen. 


And sent her down to Limerick town 




And to a, seaman sold 


" No skill hath she in household work, 


This daughter of an Irish lord 


Her hands are soft and white. 


For ten good pounds in gold. 


Yet well by loving looks and ways 




She doth her cost requite." 


The lord he smote upon his breast, 




And tore his beard so gray; 


So up they walked through Boston town. 


But he was old, and she was young, 


And met a maiden fair. 


And so she had her way. 


A little basket on her arm 




So snowy-white and bare. 


Sure that same night the Banshee howled 




To fright the evil dame, 


" Come hither, child, and say hast thou 


And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen, 


This young man ever seen ? " 


With funeral torches came. 


They wept within each other's arms, 




The page and young Kathleen. 


She watched them glancing through the 




trees. 


"Oh give to me this darling child, 


And glimmering down the hill ; 


And take my purse of gold." 



THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE 



39 



"Nay, not by me," lier master said, 
" Shall sweet Kathleen be sold. 

" We loved her in the place of one 

The Lord hath early ta'en ; 
But, since her heart 's in Ireland, 

We give her back again ! " 

Oh, for that same the saints in heaven 

For his poor soul shall pray. 
And Mary Mother wash with tears 

His heresies away. 

Sure now they dwell in Ireland ; 

As you go up Claremore 
Ye '11 see their castle looking down 

The pleasant Galway shore. 

And the old lord's wife is dead and gone, 

And a happy man is he. 
For he sits beside his own Kathleen, 

With her darling on his knee. 



THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE 

Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, de- 
scribes the holy well of Loch Maree, the waters 
of which were supposed to effect a miraculous 
cure of melancholy, trouble, and insanity. 

Calm on the breast of Loch Maree 

A little isle reposes ; 
A shadow woven of the oak 

And willow o'er it 



Within, a Druid's mound is seen. 
Set round with stony warders ; 

A fountain, gushing through the turf. 
Flows o'er its grassy borders. 

And whoso bathes therein his brow, 
With care or madness burning, 

Feels once again his healthful thought 
And sense of peace returning. 

O restless heart and fevered brain, 

Unquiet and unstable. 
That holy well of Locli Maree 

Is more than idle fable ! 

Life's changes vex, its discords stun. 
Its glaring sunshine blindeth. 

And blest is he who on his way 
That fount of healing fiudeth ! 



The shadows of a humbled will 
And contrite heart are o'er it ; 

Go read its legend, " Trust in God," 
On Faith's white stones before it. 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS 

The incident upon which this poem is based 
is related in a note to Bernardin Henri Saint 
Pierre's Etudes de la Nature. 

" We arrived at the habitation of the Her- 
mits a little before they sat down to their table, 
and while they were still at church. J. J. 
Rousseau proposed to me to offer up our devo- 
tions. The hermits were reciting- the Litanies 
of Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. 
After we had addressed our prayers to God, 
and the hermits were proceeding to the refec- 
tory, Rousseau said to me, with his heart 
overflowing, 'At this moment I experience 
what is said in the gospel : Where two or three 
are gathered together in my name, there am I in 
the midst of them. There is here a feeling of 
peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.' 
I said, ' If F^nelon had lived, you would have 
been a Catholic' He exclaimed, with tears in 
his eyes, ' Oh, if F^nelon were alive, I woidd 
struggle to get into his service, even as a 
lackey ! ' " 

In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it will be seen 
that I have somewhat antedated the period of 
his old age. At that time he was not probably 
more than fifty. In describing him, I have by 
no means exaggerated his own history of hia 
mental condition at the period of the story. 
In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of 
Nature, he thus speaks of himself: "The in- 
gratitude of those of whom I had deserved 
kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the 
total loss of my small patrimony through en- 
terprises solely undertaken for the benefit of 
my country, the debts under which I lay op- 
pressed, the blasting of all my hopes, — these 
combined calamities made dreadful inroads 
upon my health and reason. ... I found it 
impossible to continue in a room where there 
was company, especially if the doors were shut. 
I could not even cross an alley in a public gar- 
den, if several persons had got together in it. 
When alone, my malady subsided. I felt my- 
self likewise at ease in places where I saw chil- 
dren only. At the sight of any one walking 
up to the place where I was, I felt my whole 
frame agitated, and retired. I often said to 
myself, ' My sole study has been to merit well 
of mankind ; why do I fear them ? ' " 

He attributes his improved health of mind 
and body to the counsels of his friend, J. J. 
Rousseau. " I renounced," says he, " my books. 



40 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



I threw my eyes upon the works of nature, 
which spake to all my senses a language wliich 
neither time nor nations have it in their power 
to alter. Thenceforth my histories and my 
journals were the herbage of tlie fields and 
meadows. My thoughts did not go forth pain- 
fully after them, as in the case of human 
systems ; but their thoughts, under a thousand 
engaging forms, quietly sought me. In these 
I studied, without effort, the laws of that Uni- 
versal Wisdom which liad surrounded me from 
the cradle, but on which heretofore I had be- 
stowed little attention." 

Speaking of Rousseau, he says : " I derived 
inexpressible satisfaction from his society. 
What I prized still more than his genius was 
liis probity. He was one of the few literary 
characters, tried in the furnace of affliction, to 
whom you could, with perfect security, confide 
your most secret thoughts. . . . Even when he 
deviated, and became the victim of himself or 
of others, he could forget his own misery in 
devotion to the welfare of niankind. He was 
uniformly the advocate of the miserable. 
There might be inscribed on his tomb these 
affecting words from that Book of which he 
carried always about him some sel jct passages, 
during the last years of liis life : His sins, 
which are many, are forgiven, for he loved 
much." 

" I DO believe, and yet, in grief, 
I pray for help to unbelief ; 
For needful strength aside to lay 
Tlxe daily cumberiugs of ray way. 

" I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant, 
Sick of tlie crazed enthusiast's rant. 
Profession's smooth liypocrisies. 
And creeds of iron, and lives of ease. 

"I ponder o'er the sacred word, 
I read the record of our Lord ; 
And, weak and troubled, envy them 
Who touched His seamless garment's 
hem ; 

" Who save the tears of love He wept 
Above the grave where Lazarus slept ; 
And heard, amidst the shadows dim 
Of Olivet, His evening hymn. 

" How blessed the swineherd's low estate, 
The beggar crouching at the gate. 
The leper loatlily and abhorred. 
Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord ! 

'' O sacred soil His sandals pressed ! 
Sweet fountains of His noonday rest ! 



light and air of Palestine, 
Impregnate with His life divine ! 

" Oh, bear me thither ! Let me look 
On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook ; 
Kneel at Gethsemane, and by 
Gennesaret walk, before I die ! 

" Methinks this cold and northern night 
Would melt before that Orient light ; 
And, wet by Herniou's dew and rain, 
My childhood's faith revive again ! " 

So spake my friend, one autumn day, 
Where the still river slid away 
Beneath us, and above the brown 
Red curtains of the woods shut down. 

Then said I, — for I could not brook 
The mute appealing of his look, — 
" I too am weak, and faith is small, 
And blindness happeneth unto all. 

"Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight. 
Through present wrong, the eternal right ; 
And, step by step, since time began, 

1 see the steady gain of man ; 

" That all of good the past hath had 
Remains to make our own time glad, 
Our common daily life divine. 
And every land a Palestine. 

" Thou weariest of thy present state ; 
What gain to thee time's holiest date ? 
The doubter now perchance had been 
As High Priest or as Pilate then ! 

" What thought Choraziu's scribes ? What 

faith 
In Him had Nain and Nazareth ? 
Of the few followers whom He led 
One sold Him, — all forsook and fled. 

" O friend ! we need nor rock nor sand. 
Nor storied stream of Morning-Land ; 
The heavens are glassed in Merrimac, — 
What more could Jordan render back ? 

" We lack but open eye and ear 
To find the Orient's marvels here ; 
The still small voice in autunm's hush, 
Yon maple wood the burning bush. 

" For still the new transcends the old, 
In signs and tokens manifold ; 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMlTS 



41 



Slaves rise up men ; the olive waves, 
With roots deep set in battle graves ! 

" Through the harsh noises of our day 
A low, sweet prelude finds its way ; 
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of 

fear, 
A light is breaking, calm and clear. 

" That song of Love, now low and far, 
Erelong shall swell from star to star ! 
That light, the breaking day, wliich tips 
The golden-spired Apocalypse ! " 

Then, when ray good friend shook his head, 
And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said : 
" Thou mind'st me of a story told 
In rare Beruardiu's leaves of gold." 

And while the slanted sunbeams wove 
The shadows of the frost-stained grove, 
And, picturing all, the river ran 
O'er cloud and wood, I thus began : — 



In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood 
The Chapel of the Hermits stood ; 
And thither, at the close of day. 
Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray. 

One, whose impetuous youth defied 
The storms of Baikal's wintry side. 
And mused and dreamed where tropic day 
Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay. 

His simple tale of love and woe 
All hearts had melted, high or low ; — 
A blissful pain, a sweet distress, 
Immortal in its tenderness. 

Yet, while above his charmed page 
Beat quick the young heart of his age. 
He walked amidst the crowd unknown, 
A sorrowing old man, strange and lone. 

A homeless, troubled age, — the gray 
Pale setting of a weary day ; 
Too dull his ear for voice of praise, 
Too sadly worn his brow for bays. 

Pride, lust of power and glory, slept ; 
Yet still his heart its young dream kept, 
And, wandering like the deliige-dove, 
Still sought the resting-place of love. 



And, mateless, childless, envied more 
The peasant's welcome from his door 
By smiling eyes at eventide. 
Than kingly gifts or lettered pride. 

Until, in place of wife and child. 
All-pitying Nature on him smiled. 
And gave to him the golden keys 
To all her inmost sanctities. 

Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim ! 
She laid her great heart bare to him. 
Its loves and sweet accords ; — he saw 
The beauty of her perfect law. 

The language of her signs he knew, 
What notes her cloudy clarion blew ; 
The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes, 
The hymn of sunset's painted skies. 

And thus he seemed to hear the song 
Which swept, of old, the stars along ; 
And to his eyes the earth once more 
Its fresh and primal beauty wore. 

Who sought with him, from summer 

air. 
And field and wood, a balm for care, 
And bathed in light of sunset skies 
His tortured nerves and weary eyes ? 

His fame on all the winds had flown ; 
His words had shaken crypt and throne ; 
Like fire on camp and court and cell 
They dropped, and kindled as they fell. 

Beneath the pomps of state, below 
The mitred juggler's masque and show, 
A prophecy, a vague hope, ran ' 

His burning thought from man to man. 

For peace or rest too well he saw 
The fraud of priests, the wrong of law, 
And felt how hard, between the two, 
Their breath of pain the millions drew. 

A prophet-utterance, strong and wild, 
The weakness of an unweaned child, 
A sun-bright hope for human-kind, 
And self-despair, in him combined. 

He loathed the false, yet lived not true 
To half the glorious truths he knew ; 
The doubt, the discord, and the sin. 
He mourned without, he felt within. 



42 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Untrod by him the path he showed, 
Sweet pictures on his easel glowed 
Of simple faith, and loves of home, 
And virtue's golden days to come. 

But weakness, shame, and folly made 
The foil to all his pen poftrayed ; 
Still, where his dreamy splendors shone, 
The shadow of himself was thrown. 

Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times, 
Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs, 
While still his grosser instinct clings 
To earth, like other creeping things ! 

So rich in words, in acts so mean ; 

So high, so low ; chance-swung between 

The foulness of the penal pit 

And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit ! 

Vain, pride of star-lent genius ! — vain, 
Quick fancy and creative brain, 
Unblest by prayerful sacrifice. 
Absurdly great, or weakly wise I 

Midst yearnings for a truer life. 
Without were fears, within was strife ; 
And still his wayward act denied 
The perfect good for which he sighed. 

The love he sent forth void returned ; 
The fame that crowned him scorched and 

burned. 
Burning, yet cold and drear and lone, — 
A fire-mount in a frozen zone I 

Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed. 
Seen southward from his sleety mast. 
About whose brows of changeless frost 
A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed. 

Far round the mournful beauty played 
Of lambent light and purple shade. 
Lost on the fixed and dumb despair 
Of frozen earth and sea and air ! 

A man apart, unknown, unloved 
By those whose wrongs his soul had moved. 
He bore the ban of Church and State, 
The good man's fear, the bigot's hate ! 

Forth from the city's noise and throng. 
Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong. 
The twain that summer day had strayed 
To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade. 



To tliem the green fields and the wood 
Lent something of tlieir quietude, 
And golden-tinted sunset seemed 
Prophetical of all they dreamed. 

The hermits from their simple cares 
The bell was calling home to prayers, 
And, listening to its sound, the twain 
Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again. 

Wide open stood the chapel door ; 

A sweet old music, swelling o'er 

Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence, — 

The Litanies of Providence ! 

Then Rousseau spake : " Where two or 

three 
In His name meet. He there will be ! " 
And then, in silence, on their knees 
They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. 

As to the blind returning light, 
As daybreak to the Arctic night. 
Old faith revived ; the doubts of years 
Dissolved in reverential tears. 

That gush of feeling overpast, 
" Ah me ! " Bernardin sighed at last, 
" I would thy bitterest foes coidd see 
Thy heart as it is seen of me ! 

" No church of God hast thou denied ; 
Tliou hast but spurned in scorn aside 
A bare and hollow counterfeit. 
Profaning the pure name of it ! 

" With dry dead moss and marish weeds 
His fire the western herdsman feeds. 
And greener from the ashen plain 
The sweet spring grasses rise again. 

" Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind 
Disturb the solid sky behind ; 
And through the cloud tlie red bolt rends 
The calm, still smile of Heaven descends ! 

" Thus through the world, like bolt and 

blast. 
And scourging fire, thy words* have passed. 
Clouds break, — the steadfast heavens re* 

main ; 
Weeds burn, — the ashes feed the grain ! 

" But whose? strives vnth wrong may find 
Its touch pollute, its darkness blind ; 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS 



43 



And learn, as latent fraud is shown 
In others' faith, to doubt his own. 

" With dream and falsehood, simple trust 
And pious hope we tread in dust ; 
Lost the calm faith in goodness, — lost 
The baptism of the Pentecost ! 

" Alas ! — the blows for error meant 
Too oft on truth itself are spent, 
As through the false and vile and base 
Looks forth her sad, rebuking face. 

" Not ours the Theban's charmed life ; 
We come not scathless from the strife ! 
The Python's coil about us clings, 
The trampled Hydra bites and stings ! 

" Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance. 
The plastic shapes of circumstance, 
What might have been we fondly guess. 
If earlier born, or tempted less. 

" And thou, in these wild, troubled days, 
Misjudged alike in blame and praise, 
Unsought and undeserved the same 
The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame ; — 

" I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been 
Among the highly favored men 
Who walked on earth with F^nelon, 
He would have owned thee as his son ; 

" And, bright with wings of cherubim 

Visibly waving over him, 

Seen through his life, the Church had 

seemed 
All that its old confessors dreamed." 

" I would have been," Jean Jacques re- 
plied, 
" The humblest servant at his side, 
Obscure, unknown, content to see 
How beautiful man's life may be ! 

" Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more 
Than solemn rite or sacred lore, 
The holy life of one who trod 
The foot-marks of the Christ of God ! 

" Amidst a blinded world he saw 
The oneness of the Dual law ; 
That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth be- 
gan, 
And God was loved through love of man. 



" He lived the Truth which reconciled 
The strong man Reason, Faith, the child ; 
In him belief and act were one, 
The homilies of duty done ! " 

So speaking, through the twilight gray 
The two old pilgrims went their way. 
What seeds of life that day were sown, 
The heavenly watchers knew alone. 

Time passed, and Autumn came to fold 
Green Summer in her brown and gold ; 
Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow 
Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau. 

" The tree remaineth where it fell, 
The pained on earth is pained in hell ! " 
So priestcraft from its altars cursed 
The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed. 

Ah ! well of old the Psalmist prayed, 
" Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid ! " 
Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above, 
And man is hate, but God is love ! 

No Hermits now the wanderer sees, 
Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees ; 
A morning dream, a tale that 's told. 
The wave of change o'er all has rolled. 

Yet lives the lesson of that day ; 
And fi-om its twilight cool and gray 
Comes up a low, sad whisper, " Make 
The truth thine own, for truth's own 
sake. 

" Why wait to see in thy brief span 
Its perfect flower and fruit in man ? 
No saintly touch can save ; no balm 
Of healing hath the martyr's palm. 

" Midst soulless forms, and false pretence 
Of spiritual pride and pampered sense, 
A voice saith, ' What is that to thee ? 
Be true thyself, and follow Me ! ' 

" In days when throne and altar heard 
The wanton's wish, the bigot's word. 
And pomp of state and ritual show 
Scarce hid the loathsome death below, — 

" Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul, 
The losel swarm of crown and cowl. 
White-robed walked Francois Fdnelon, 
Stainless as Uriel in the sun I 



44 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" Yet in his time the stake blazed red, 
The poor were eaten up like bread : 
Men knew him not ; his garment's hem 
No healing virtue had for them. 

" Alas ! no present saint we find ; 
The white cymar gleams far behind, 
Revealed in outline vague, sublime. 
Through telescopic mists of time ! 

" Trust not in man with passing breath. 

But in the Lord, old Scripture saith ; 

The truth which saves thou mayest not 

blend 
With false professor, faithless friend. 

"Search thine own heart. What paineth 

thee 
In others in thyself may be ; 
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak ; 
Be thou the true man thou dost seek ! 

"Where now with pain thou treadest, 

trod 
The whitest of the saints of God ! 
To show thee where their feet were set, 
The light which led them shineth yet. 

" The footprints of the life divine. 
Which marked their path, remain in thine ; 
And that great Life, transfused in theirs, 
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers ! " 

A lesson which I well may heed, 
A word of fitness to my need ; 
So from that twilight cool and gray 
Still saith a voice, or seems to say. 



We rose, and slowly homeward turned, 
While down the west the sunset Inirned ; 
And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide. 
And human forms seemed glorified. 

The village hoines transfigured stood, 
And purple bluffs, whose belting wood 
Across the waters leaned to hold 
The yellow leaves like lamps of gold. 

Then spake my friend : " Thy words are 

true ; 
Forever old, forever new, 
These home-seen splendors are flie same 
Which over Eden's sunsets came. 



" To these bowed heavens let wood and 

hill 
Lift voiceless praise and anthem still ; 
Fall, warm with blessing, over them, 
Light of the New Jerusalem ! 

" Flow on, sweet river, like the stream 
Of John's Apocalyptic dream ! 
This mapled ridge shall Horeb be, 
Yon green-banked lake our Galilee ! 

" Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more 
For olden time and holier shore ; 
God's love and blessing, then and there, 
Are now and here and everywhere." 



TAULER 

Taulkr, the preacher, walked, one au- 
tumn day. 
Without the walls of Strasburg, by the 

Rhine, 
Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life ; 
As one who, wandering in a starless night. 
Feels momently the jar of unseen waves. 
And hears the thunder of an unknown sea. 
Breaking along an unimagined shore. 

And as he walked he prayed. Even the 

same 
Old prayer with which, for half a score of 

years. 
Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and 

heart 
Had groaned : " Have pity upon me, Lord ! 
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am 

blind. 
Send me a man who can direct my steps ! " 

Then, as he mused, he heard along his 

path 
A sound as of an old man's staff among 
The dry, dead linden-leaves ; and, looking 

up. 
He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and 

old. 

" Peace be unto thee, father ! " Tauler 

said, 
" God give thee a good day ! " The old 

man raised 
Slowly his calm blue eyes. " I thank thee, 

son ; 
But all my days are good, and none are ill." 



THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID 



45 



Wondering thereat, the preacher spake 

again, 
" God give thee happy life." The old man 

smiled, 
" I never am unhappy." 

Tauler laid 
His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray 

sleeve : 
" Tell me, O father, what thy strange words 

mean. 
Surely man's days are evil, and his life 
Sad as the grave it leads to." " Nay, my 

son. 
Our times are in God's hands, and all our 

days 
Are as our needs ; for shadow as for sun, 
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike 
Our thanks are due, since that is best which 

is ; 
And that which is not, sharing not His life, 
Is evil only as devoid of good. 
And for the happiness of which I spake, 
I find it in submission to His will. 
And calm trust in the holy Trinity 
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty 

Power." 

Silently wondering, for a little space. 
Stood the great preacher ; then he spake 

as one 
Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting 

thought 
Which long has followed, whispering 

through the dark 
Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into 

light : 
" What if God's will consign thee hence to 

Hell ? " 

" Then," said the stranger, cheerily, " be 

it so. 
What Hell may be I know not ; this I 

know, — 
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord. 
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon 
His dear humanity ; the other. Love, 
Clasps his Divinity. So where I go 
He goes ; and better fire-walled Hell with 

Him 
Than golden-gated Paradise without." 

Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sud- 
den light. 
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove 



Apart the shadow wherein he had walked 
Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old 

man 
Went his slow way, until his silver hair 
Set like the white moon where the hills of 

vine 
Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and 

said : 
" My prayer is answered. God hath sent 

the man 
Long sought, to teach me, by his simple 

trust. 
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew." 

So, entering with a changed and cheer- 
ful step 
The city gates, he saw, far down the street, 
A mighty shadow break the light of noon, 
Which tracing backward till its airy lines 
Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes 
O'er broad facade and lofty pediment, 
O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche, 
Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the 

wise 
Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where 
In the noon-brightness the great Minster's 

tower, 
Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown, 
Rose like a visible prayrtr. " Behold ! " he 

said, 
"The stranger's faith made plain before 

mine eyes. 
As yonder tower outstretches to the earth 
The dark triangle of its shade alone 
When the clear day is shining on its top. 
So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life 
Is but the shadow of God's providence, 
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon ; 
And what is dark below is liffht in Heaven." 



THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID 

O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith, 
From inmost founts of life ye start, — 

The spirit's pulse, the vital breath 
Of soul and heart ! 

From pastoral toil, from traffic's din, 
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad, 

Unheard of man, ye enter in 
The ear of God. 

Ye brook no forced and measured tasks. 
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains ; 



46 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The simple heart, that freely asks 


" My brother tills beside the Nile 


In love, obtains. 


His little field ; beneath the leaves 




My sisters sit and spin, the while 


For man the living temple is : 


My mother weaves. 


The mercy-seat and cherubim, 




And all the holy mysteries, 


" And when the millet's ripe heads fall, 


He bears with him. 


And all the bean-field hangs in pod. 




My mother smiles, and says that all 


And most avails the prayer of love, 


Are gifts from God. 


Which, wordless, shapes itself in deeds. 




And wearies Heaven for naught above 


" And when to share our evening meal. 


Our common needs. 


She calls the stranger at the door. 




She says God fills the hands that deal 


Which brings to God's all-perfect will 


Food to the poor." 


That trust of His undoubtiug child 




Whereby all seeming good and ill 


Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks 


Are reconciled. 


Glistened the flow of human tears ; 




" Dear Lord ! " he said, " Thy angel speaks, 


And, seeking not for special signs 


Thy servant hears." 


Of favor, is content to fall 




Within the providence which shines 


Within his arms the child he took. 


And rains on all. 


And thought of home and life with men ; 




And all his pilgrim feet forsook 


Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned 


Returned again. 


At noontime o'er the sacred word. 




Was it an angel or a fiend 


The palmy shadows cool and long. 


Whose voice he heard ? 


The eyes that smiled through lavish 
locks. 
Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song. 


It broke the desert's hush of awe. 


A human utterance, sweet and mild ; 


And bleat of flocks. 


And, looking up, the hermit saw 




A little child. 


" child ! " he said, " thou teachest me 




There is no place where God is no^ ; 


A child, with wonder-widened eyes. 


That love will make, where'er it be. 


O'erawed and troubled by the sight 


A holy spot." 


Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies, 




And anchorite. 


He rose from off the desert sand. 




And, leaning on his staff of thorn. 


" What dost thou here, poor man ? No 


Went with the young child hand in hand. 


shade 


Like night with morn. 


Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor 




well. 


They crossed the desert's burning line, 


Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said : 


And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan, 


« With God I dwell. 


The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine, 




And voice of man. 


" Alone with Him in this great calm. 




I live not by the outward sense ; 


Unquestioning, his childish guide 


My Nile his love, my sheltering palm 
His providence." 


He followed, as the small hand led 


To where a woman, gentle-eyed. 




Her distaff fed. 


The child gazed round him. "Does God 




live 


She rose, she clasped her truant boy. 


Here only ? — where the desert's rim 


She thanked the stranger with her eyes ; 


Is green with corn, at morn and eve, 


The hermit gazed in doubt and joy 


We pray to Him. 


And dumb surprise. 



MAUD MULLER 



47 



And lo ! — with sudden warmth and light 
A tender memory thrilled his frame ; 

New-born, the world-lost anchorite 
A man became. 

" O sister of El Zara's race, 

Behold me ! — had we not one mother ? " 
She gazed into the stranger's face : 

" Thou art my brother ! " 

" O kin of blood ! Thy life of use 
And patient trust is more than mine ; 

And wiser than the gray recluse 
This child of thine. 

"For, taught of him whom God hath 
sent, 

That toil is praise and love is prayer, 
I come, life's cares and pains content 

With thee to share." 

Even as his foot the threshold crossed 
The hermit's better life began ; 

Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost. 
And found a man ! 



MAUD MULLER 

The recollection of some descendants of a 
Hessian deserter in the Revolutionary war bear- 
ing the name of MuUer doubtless suggested 
the somewhat infelicitous title of a New Eng- 
land idyl. The poem had no real foundation 
in fact, though a hint of it may have been found 
in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a 
journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard 
with mv sister some years before it was writ- 
ten. We had stopped to rest our tired horse 
under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh 
him with water from a little brook which 
rippled through the stone wall across the road. 
A very beautiful young girl in scantest sum- 
mer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as 
we talked with her we noticed that she strove 
to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, 
blushing as she did so, through the tan of her 
cheek and neck. 

Maud Muller on a summer's day 
Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth 
Of simple beauty and rustic health. 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 



But when she glanced to the far-off town, 
White from its hill-slope looking down, 

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest 
And a nameless longing filled her breast, — 

A wish that she hardly dared to own, 
For something better than she had known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane. 
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid. 

And asked a draught from the spring that 

flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled 

up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup. 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down 
On her feet so bare, and her tattered- gown. 

" Thanks ! " said the Judge ; " a sweeter 

draught 
From a fairer hand was never quaffed." 

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, 
Of the singing birds and the humming bees ; 

Then talked of the haying, and wondered 

whether 
The cloud in the west would bring foul 

weather. 

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, 
And her graceful ankles bare and brown ; 

And listened, while a pleased surprise 
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. 

At last, like one who for delay 
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 

]\Iaud Muller looked and sighed : " Ah me ! 
That I the Judge's bride might be ! 

" He would dress me up in silks so fine, 
And praise and toast me at his wine. 

" My father should wear a broadcloth coat , 
My brother should sail a painted boat. 



48 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" I 'cl dress my mother so grand and gay, 
And the baby should have a new toy each 
day. 

" And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the 

poor, 
And all should bless me who left our door." 

Th« Judge looked back as he climbed the 



ifi! 



hi 
And saw Maud MuUer standing still. 

" A form more fair, a face more sweet, 
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. 

" And her modest answer and graceful air 
Show her wise and good as she is fair. 

" WoiUd she were mine, and I to-day, 
Like her, a harvester of hay ; 

" No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs. 
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, 

" But low of cattle and song of birds, 
And health and quiet and loving words." 

But he thought of his sisters, proud and 

cold, 
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on. 
And Maud was left in the field alone. 

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, 
When he hummed in court an old love- 
tune ; 

And the young g^rl mused beside the well 
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. 

He wedded a wife of richest dower. 
Who lived for fashion, as he for power. 

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, 
He watched a picture come and go ; 

And sweet Maud MuUer's hazel eyes 
Looked out in their innocent surprise. 

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, 
He longed for the wayside well instead ; 

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms 
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. 



And the proud man sighed, with a secret 

pain, 
" Ah, that I were free again ! 

" Free as when I rode that day. 

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay." 

She wedded a man unlearned and poor. 
And many children played round her door. 

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain. 
Left their traces on heart and brain. 

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot 
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot, 

And she heard the little spring brook fall 
Over the roadside, through the wall, 

In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein ; 

And, gazing down with timid grace. 
She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls; 

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned. 

And for him who sat by the chimney lug. 
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw. 
And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life again, 
Sa^'ing only, "It might have been." 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 

For rich repiner and household drudge ! 

God pity them both ! and pity us all. 
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these : " It might have 
been ! " 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes ; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away ! 



MARY GARVIN 



49 



MARY GARVIN 

From the heart of Waumbek Methna, from 

the lake that never fails, 
Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's 

intervales ; 
There, in wild and virgin freshness, its 

waters foam and flow. 
As when Darby Field first saw them, two 

hundred years ago. 

But, vexed in all its seaward course with 

bridges, dams, and mills, 
How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its 

freedom of the hills, 
Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and 

stately C hamper noon 
Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, 

the trumpet of the loon ! 

With smoking axle hot with speed, with 
steeds of fli-e and steam, 

Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday be- 
hind ])im like a dream. 

Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly 
backward far and fast 

The milestones of the fathers, the land- 
marks of the past. 

But human hearts remain unchanged : the 

sorrow and the sin, 
The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to 

our own akin ; 
And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs 

our mothers sung, 
Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance 

is always young. 

O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's 
banks to-day ! 

O mill-girl watching late and long the 
shuttle's restless play ! 

Let, for the once, a listening ear the work- 
ing hand beguile. 

And lend my old Provincial tale, as suits, 
a tear or smile ! 



The evening gun had sounded from gray 

Fort Mary's walls ; 
Through the forest, like a wild beast, 

roared and plunged the Saco's 

falls. 



And westward on the sea-wind, that damp 

and gusty grew. 
Over cedars darkening inland the smokes 

of Spur wink blew. 

On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, blazed 

the crackling walnut log ; 
Right and left sat dame and goodman, and 

between them lay the dog. 

Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and 

beside him on her mat. 
Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked and 

purred the mottled cat. 

" Twenty years ! " said Goodman Garvin, 
speaking sadly, under breath, 

And his gray head slowly shaking, as one 
who speaks of death. 

The goodwife dropped her needles : " It is 

twenty years to-day. 
Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our 

child away." 

Then they sank into the silence, for each 

knew the other's thought. 
Of a great and common sorrow, and words 

were needed not. 

" Who knocks ? " cried Goodman Garvin. 

The door was open thrown ; 
On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked 

and furred, the firelight shone. 

One with courteous gesture lifted the bear- 
skin from his head ; 

" Lives here Elkanah Garvin ? " "1 am 
he," the goodman said. 

" Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for 
the night is chill with rain." 

And the goodwife drew the settle, and 
stirred the fire amain. 

The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the 

firelight glistened fair 
In her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds 

of dark brown hair. 

Dame Garvin looked upon her : " It is 

Mary's self I see ! 
Dear heart ! " she cried, " now tell 

me, has my child come back to 

me?" 



5° 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"My name indeed is Mary," said the 

stranger sobbing wild ; 
" Will you be to me a mother ? I am 

Mary Garvin's child ! 

" She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her 

dying day 
She bade my father take me to her kinsfolk 

far away. 

" And wlien the priest besought her to do 

nie no such wrong, 
She said, ' May God forgive me ! I have 

closed my heart too long. 

" ' When I hid me from my father, and shut 

out my mother's call, 
I sinned against those dear ones, and the 

Father of us all. 

"'Christ's love rebukes no home -love, 
breaks no tie of kin apart ; 

Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy of 
heart. 

" * Tell me not the Church must cen- 
sure : she who wept the Cross be- 
side 

Never made her own flesh strangers, nor 
the claims of blood denied ; 

" ' And if she who wronged her parents, 
with her child atones to them. 

Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother ! thou 
at least wilt not condemn ! ' 

" So, upon her death-bed lying, my blessed 

mother spake ; 
As we come to do her bidding, so receive 

us for her sake." 

" God be praised ! " said Goodwife Garvin, 
" He taketh, and He gives ; 

He wouiuletli, but He healeth ; in her 
child our daughter lives ! " 

" Amen ! " the old man answered, as he 

brushed a tear away, 
And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, with 

reverence, " Let us pray." 

All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew 

paraphrase. 
Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose 

his prayer of love and praise. 



But he started at beholding, as he rose 

from off his knee, 
The stranger cross his forehead with the 

sign of Papistrie. 

" What is this ? " cried Farmer Garvin. 

" Is an English Christian's home 
A chapel or a mass-house, that you make 

the sign of Rome ? " 

Then the young girl knelt beside him, kissed 
his trembling hand, and cried : 

" Oh, forbear to chide my father ; in that 
faith my mother died ! 

" On her wooden cross at Simcoe the daws 

and sunshine fall, 
As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard ; and 

the dear God watches all ! " 

The old man stroked the fair head that 

rested on his knee ; 
"Your words, dear child," he answered, 

" are God's rebuke to me. 

" Creed and rite perchance may differ, yet 
our faith and hope be one. 

Let me be your father's father, let him be 
to me a son. " 

When the horn, on Sabbath morning, 
through the still and frosty air. 

From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, 
called to sermon and to prayer, 

To the goodly house of worship, where, in 

order due and fit, 
As by public vote directed, classed and 

ranked the people sit ; 

Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly 

squire before the clown. 
From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to 

the gray frock, shading down ; 

From the pulpit read the preacher, " Good- 
man Garvin and his wife 

Fain would thank the Lord, whose kind- 
ness has followed them through 
life, 

" For the great and crowning mercy, that 
their daughter, from the wild, 

Where she rests (they hope in God's peace), 
has sent to them her child ; 



THE RANGER 



SI 



"And the prayers of all God's people they 

ask, that they may prove 
Not unworthy, through their weakness, of 

such special proof of love." , 

As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged 

couple stood. 
And the fair Canadian also, in her modest 

maidenhood. 

Thought the elders, grave and doubting, 
" She is Papist born and bred ; " 

Thought the young men, *' T is an angel in 
Mary Garvin's stead ! " 



THE RANGER 

Originally published as Martha Mason; a 
Song of the Old French War. 

Robert Rawlin ! — Frosts were falling 
When the ranger's horn was calling 

Through the woods to Canada. 
Gone the winter's sleet and snowing, 
Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing, 
Gone the summer's harvest mowing. 

And again the fields are gray. 

Yet away, he 's away ! 
Faint and fainter hope is growing 

In the hearts that mourn his stay. 

Where the lion, crouching high on 
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron, 

Glares o'er wood and wave away, 
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing, 
Or as thunder spent and dying, 
Come the challenge and replying, 

Come the sotmds of flight and fray. 

Well-a-day ! Hope and pray ! 
Some are living, some are lying 

In their red graves far away. 

Straggling rangers, worn with dangers, 
Homeward faring, weary strangers 

Pass the farm-gate on their way ; 
Tidings of the dead and living. 
Forest march and ambush, giving, 
Till the maidens leave their weaving. 

And the lads forget their play. 

" Still away, still away ! " 
Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving, 

" Why does Robert still delay ! " 

Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer. 
Does the golden-locked fruit bearer 



Through his painted woodlands stray, 
Than where hillside oaks and beeches 
Overlook the long, blue I'eaches, 
Silver coves and pebbled beaches, 

And green isles of Casco Bay ; 

Nowhere day, for delay, 
With a tenderer look beseeches, 

" Let me with my charmed earth stay." 

On the grain-lands of the mainlands 
Stands the serried corn like train-bands, 

Plume and pennon rustling gay ; 
Out at sea, the islands wooded, 
Silver birches, golden-hooded. 
Set with maples, crimson-blooded, 

White sea-foam and sand-hills gray. 

Stretch away, far away, 
Dim and dreamy, over-brooded 

By the hazy autumn day. 

Gayly chattering to the clattering 

Of the brown nuts downward pattering. 

Leap the squirrels, red and gray. 
On the grass-land, on the fallow, 
Drop the apples, red and yellow ; 
Drop the russet pears and mellow. 

Drop the red leaves all the day. 

And away, swift away, 
Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow 

Chasing, weave their web of play. 

" Martha Mason, Martha Mason, 
Prithee tell us of the reason 

Why you mope at home to-day : 
Surely smiling is not sinning ; 
Leave your quilling, leave your spinning 
What is all your store of linen, 

If your heart is never gay ? 

Come away, come away ! 
Never yet did sad beginning 

Make the task of life a play." 

Overbending till she 's blending 
With the flaxen skein she 's tending 

Pale brown tresses smoothed away 
From her face of patient sorrow, 
Sits she, seeking but to borrow, 
From the trembling hope of morrow. 

Solace for the weary day. 

" Go your way, laugh and play ; 
Unto Him who heeds the sparrow 

And the lily, let me pray." 

" With our rally rings the valley, — 
Join us ! " cried the blue-eyed Nelly ; 



52 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"Join us ! " cried the laughing May, 
" To the beach we all are going, 
And, to save the task of rowing. 
West by north the wind is blowing, 

Blowing briskly down the bay ! 

Come away, come away ! 
Time and tide are swiftly flowing. 

Let us take them while we may ! 

" Never tell us that you '11 fail us, 
Where the purple beach-plum mellows 

On the blutfs so wild and gray. 
Hasten, for the oars are falling ; 
Hark, our merry mates are calling ; 
Time it is that we were all in. 

Singing tideward down the bay ! " 

" Nay, nay, let me stay ; 
Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin 

Is my heart," she said, " to-day." 

" Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin ! 
Some red squaw his moose-meat 's broiling. 

Or some French lass, singing gay ; 
Just forget as he 's forgetting ; 
What avails a life of fretting ? 
If some stars must needs be setting, 

Others rise as good as they." 

" Cease, I pray ; go your way ! " 
Martha cries, her eyelids wetting ; 

" Foul and false the words you say ! " 

" Martha Mason, hear to reason ! 
Prithee, put a kinder face on ! " 

" Cease to vex me," did she say ; 
" Better at his side be lying. 
With the mournful pine-trees sighing, 
And the wild birds o'er us crying. 

Than to doubt like mine a prey ; 

While away, far away, 
Turns my heart, forever trying 

Some new hope for each new day. 

" When the shadows veil the meadows, 
And the sunset's golden ladders 

Sink from twilight's walls of gray, — 
From the window of my dreaming, 
I can see his sickle gleaming, 
Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming 

Down the locust-shaded way ; 

But away, swift away. 
Fades the fond, delusive seeming. 

And I kneel again to pray. 

" When the growing dawn is showing, 
And the barn-yard cock is crowing, 



And the horned moon pales away : 
From a dream of him awaking. 
Every sound my heart is making 
Seems a footstep of his taking ; 

Then I hush the thought, and say, 

' Nay, nay, he 's away ! ' 
Ah ! my lieart, my heart is breaking 

For the dear one far away." 

Look up, Martha ! worn and swarthy, 
Glows a face of manhood worthy : 

" Robert ! " " Martha ! " all they say. 
O'er went wheel and I'eel together, 
Little cared the owner whither ; 
Heart of lead is heart of feather, 

Noon of night is noon of day ! 

Come away, come away ! 
When such lovers meet each other, 

Why should prying idlers stay ? 

Quench the timber's fallen embers. 
Quench the red leaves in December's 

Hoary rime and chilly spray. 
But the hearth shall kindle clearer. 
Household welcomes sound siucerer, 
Heart to loving heart draw nearer. 

When the bridal bells shall say : 

" Hope and pray, trust alway ; 
Life is sweeter, love is dearer, 

For the trial and delay ! " 



THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN 

From the hills of home forth looking, far 

beneath the tent-like span 
Of the sky, 1 see the white gleam of the 

headland of Cape Ann. 
Well I know its coves and beaches to the 

ebb-tide glimmering down. 
And the white-walled hamlet children of 

its ancient fishing-town. 

Long has passed the summer morning, and 

its memory waxes old. 
When along yon breezy headlands with a 

pleasant friend I strolled. 
Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and the 

ocean wind blows cool, 
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around 

thy grave, Rantoul ! 

With the memory of that morning by the 
summer sea I blend 



THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN 



53 



A wild and wondrous story, by the younger 

Mather penned. 
In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all 

strange and marvellous things, 
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the 

chaos Ovid sings. 

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the 

dual life of old, 
Inward, grand with awe and reverence ; 

outward, mean and coarse and 

cold ; 
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull 

and vulgar clay. 
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web 

of hodden gray. 

The great eventful Present hides the 

Past ; but through the din 
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the 

life behind steal in ; 
And the lore of home and fireside, and the 

legendary rhyme, 
Make the task of duty lighter which the 

true man owes his time. 

So, with something of the feeling which 
the Covenanter knew, 

When with pious chisel wandering Scot- 
land's moorland graveyards through, 

From the graves of old traditions I part 
the blackberry-vines, 

Wipe the moss from off the headstones, 
and retouch the faded lines. 



Where the sea - waves back and for- 
ward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, 
ran. 

The garrison-house stood watching on the 
gray rocks of Cape Ann ; 

On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and 
palisade, 

And rough walls of unhewn timber with 
the moonlight overlaid. 

On his slow round walked the sentry, south 

and eastward looking forth 
O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white 

with breakers stretching north, — 
Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, 

jagged capes, with bush and tree. 
Leaning inland from the smiting of the 

wild and gusty sea. 



Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly 

lit by dying brands, 
Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their 

muskets in their hands ; 
On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison 

haunch was shared, 
And the pewter tankard circled slowly 

romid from beard to beard. 

Long they sat and talked together, — 

talked of wizards Satan-sold ; 
Of all ghostly sights and noises, — signs 

and wonders manifold ; 
Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead 

men in her shrouds. 
Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of 

morning clouds ; 

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the 

depths of Gloucester woods, 
Full of plants that love the summer, — 

blooms of warmer latitudes ; 
Where the Arctic birch is braided by the 

tropic's flowery vines. 
And the white magnolia-blossoms star the 

twilight of the pines ! 

But their voices sank yet lower, saidc to 

husky tones of fear. 
As they spake of present tokens of the 

powers of evil near ; — 
Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel 

and aim of gun ; 
Never yet was ball to slay them in the 

mould of mortals run ! 

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, 
from the midnight wood they 
came, — 

Thrice around the block-house march- 
ing, met, unharmed, its volleyed 
flame ; 

Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, 
sunk in earth or lost in air, 

All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the 
moonlit sands lay bare. 

Midnight came ; from out the forest moved 

a dusky mass that soon 
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, 

grimly marching in the moon. 
"Ghosts or witches," said the captain, 

" thus I foil the Evil One ! " 
And he rammed a silver button, from his 

doublet, down his gun. 



54 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Ouce again the spectral horror moved the 

guarded wall about ; 
Once again the levelled muskets through 

the palisades flashed out, 
With that deadly aim the squirrel on his 

tree-top might not shun, 
Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his 

slant wing to the sun. 

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harm- 
less shower of lead. 

With a laugh of fierce derision, once again 
the phantoms fled ; 

Once again, without a shadow on the sands 
the moonlight lay, 

And the white smoke curling through it 
drifted slowly down the bay ! 

" God preserve us ! " said the captain ; 

" never mortal foes were there ; 
They have vanished with their leader, 

Prince and Power of the air ! 
Lay aside your useless weapons ; skill and 

prowess naught avail ; 
They who do the Devil's service wear their 

master's coat of mail ! " 

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when 
again a warning call 

Roused the score of weary soldiers watch- 
ing round the dusky hall : 

And they looked to flint and priming, and 
they longed for break of day ; 

But the captain closed his Bible : " Let us 
cease from man, and pray ! " 

To the men who went before us, all the un- 
seen powers seemed near, 

And their steadfast strength of courage 
struck its roots in holy fear. 

Every hand forsook the musket, every head 
was bowed and bare. 

Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as 
the captain led in prayer. 

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the 

spectres round the wall. 
But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the 

ears and hearts of all, — 
Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! 

Never after mortal man 
Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round 

the block-house of Cape Ann. 

So to us who walk in summer through the 
cool and sea-blown town, 



From the childhood of its people comes the 

solemn legend down. 
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose 

moral lives the youth 
And the fitness and the freshness of an un- 

decaying truth. 

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the 

spectres of the mind. 
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, 

in the darkness undefined ; 
Round us throng the grim projections of the 

heart and of the brain. 
And our pride of strength is weakness, and 

the cunning hand is vain. 

In the dark we cry like children ; and no 

answer from on high 
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and 

no white wings downward fly ; 
But the heavenly help we pray for comes to 

faith, and not to sight, 
And our prayers themselves drive backward 

all the spirits of the night ! 



THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS 

Tritemius of Herbipolis, one day, 
While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray 
Alone with God, as was his pious choice. 
Heard from without a miserable voice, 
A sound which seemed of all sad things to 

tell. 
As of a lost soul crying out of hell. 

Thereat the Abbot paused ; the chain 

whereby 
His thoughts went upward broken by that 

cry ; 
And, looking from the casement, saw below 
A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow, 
And withered hands held up tc. him, who 

cried 
For alms as one who might not be denied. 

She cried, " For the dear love of Him who 

gave 
His life for ours, my child from bondage 

save, — 
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with 

slaves 
In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit 

waves 
Lap the white walls of Tunis ! " — " What 

I can 



SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 



55 



I give," Tritemius said, "my prayers." — 
" O man 

Of God ! " she cried, for grief had made 
her bold, 

" Mock me not thus ; I ask not prayers, 
but gold. 

Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice ; 

Even while I speak perchance my first- 
born dies." 

" Woman ! " Tritemius answered, " from 

our door 
None go unfed, hence are we always poor ; 
A single soldo is our only store. 
Thou hast our prayers ; — what can we 

give thee more ? " 

" Give me," she said, " the silver candle- 
sticks 

On either side of the great crucifix. 

God well may spare them on His errands 
sped, 

Or He can give you golden ones instead." 

Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy 

word, 
Woman, so be it ! (Our most gracious 

Lord, 
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice, 
Pardon me if a human soul I prize 
Above the gifts upon his altar piled !) 
Take what thou askest, and redeem thy 

child." 

But his hand trembled as the holy alms 
He placed within the beggar's eager palms ; 
And as she vanished down the linden shade, 
He bowed his head and for forgiveness 
prayed. 

So the day passed, and when the twilight 
came 

He woke to find the chapel all aflame, 

And, dumb with grateful wonder, to be- 
hold 

Upon the altar candlesticks of gold ! 



SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 

In the valuable and carefully prepared His- 
tory of Marblehead, published in 1879 by 
Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the crew 
of Captain Ireson, rather than himself, were 
responsible for the abandonment of the dis- 



abled vessel. To screen themselves they 
charged their captain with the crime. In view 
of this the writer of the ballad addressed the 
following letter to the historian : — 

Oak Knoll, Danvers, 5 mo. 18, 1880. 

My dear Fkiend ; I heartily thank thee 
for a copy of thy History of Marblehead. I 
have read it with great interest and think good 
use has been made of the abundant material. 
No town in Essex County has a leeord more 
honorable than Marblehead ; no one has done 
more to develop the industrial interests of our 
New England seaboard, and certainly none 
have given such evidence of self-saciificing 
patriotism. I am glad the story of it has been 
at last told, and told so well. I have now no 
doubt that thy version of Skipper Ireson's 
ride is the correct one. My verse was founded 
solely on a fragment of rh3rme which I heard 
from one of my early schoolmates, a native of 
Marblehead. 

I supposed the story to which it referred dated 
back at least a century. I knew nothing of 
the participators, and the narrative of the ballad 
was pure fancy. I am glad for the sake of 
truth and justice that the real facts are given in 
thy book. I certainly would not knowingly do 
injustice to any one, dead or living. 
I am very truly thy friend, 

John G, Whittieh. 

Of all the rides since the birth of time, 
Told in story or sung in rhyme, — 
On Apuleius's Golden Ass, 
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass. 
Witch astride of a human back, 
Islam's prophet on Al-Bordk, — 
The strangest ride that ever was sped 
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Body of turkey, head of owl, 
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, 
Feathered and ruffled in every part, 
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. 
Scores of women, old and young, 
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, 
Pushed and pulled up tlie rocky lane, 
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain : 
" Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
eorrt 
By the women o' Mprble'ead 1 " 



56 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, 

Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, 

Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase 

Bacchus round some antique vase, 

Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, 

Loose of kerchief and loose of hair. 

With conch-shells blowing and lish-horns' 

twang. 
Over and over the Msenads sang : 

" Here 's Find Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

Small pity for him ! — He sailed away 
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay, — 
Sailed away from a sinking wreck. 
With his own town's-people on her deck ! 
" Lay by ! lay by ! " they called to him. 
Back he answered, " Sink or swim ! 
Brag of your catch of fish again ! " 
And off he sailed through the fog and 
rain ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur 
That wreck shall lie forevermore. 
Mother and sister, wife and maid. 
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead 
Over the moaning and rainy sea, — 
Looked for the coming that might not 

be ! 
What did the winds and the sea - birds 

say 
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? — 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Through the street, on either side, 
Up flew windows, doors swung wide ; 
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, 
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. 
Sea- worn grandsires, cripple-bound, 
Hulks of old sailors run aground. 
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, 
And cracked with curses the hoarse re- 
frain : 
" Here 's Find Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 



Sweetly along the Salem road 
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. 
Little the wicked skipper knew 
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. 
Riding there in his sorry trim. 
Like an Indian idol glum and grim. 
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear 
Of voices shouting, far and near : 

" Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 
horrt, 

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

" Hear me, neighbors ! " at last he cried, — 
" What to me is this noisy ride ? 
What is the shame that clothes the skin 
To the nameless horror that lives within ? 
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, 
And hear a cry from a reeling deck ! 
Hate me and curse me, — I only dread 
The hand of God and the face of the dead ! " 
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea 
Said, " God has touched him ! why should 

we ! " 
Said an old wife mourning her only son, 
" Cut the rogue's tether and let him run ! " 
So with soft relentings and rude excuse. 
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose. 
And gave him a cloak to hide him in, 
And left him alone with his shame and 
sin. 
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 



THE SYCAMORES 

Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of 
Haverhill, Mass. He planted the buttonwood 
trees on the bank of the river below the village 
ill the early part of the seventeenth centurv. 
Unfortunately this noble avenue is now nearly 
destroyed. 

In the outskirts of the village, 
On the river's winding shores. 

Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 



THE SYCAMORES 



57 



One long century hath been numbered, 

And another half-way told, 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 

Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music, 

At his violin's somid they grew. 

Through the moonlit eves of summer. 
Making Amphion's fable true. 

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant ! 

Pass in jerkin green along, 
With thy eyes brimful of laughter. 

And thy mouth as full of song. 

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts, 

With liis fiddle and his pack ; 

Little dreamed the village Saxons 
Of the myriads at his back. 

How he wrought with spade and fiddle, 
Delved by day and sang by night, 

With a hand that never wearied. 
And a heart forever light, — 

Still the gay tradition mingles 
With a record grave and drear, 

Like the rollic air of Cluny 

With the solemn march of Mear. 

When the box-tree, white with blossoms, 
Made the sweet May woodlands glad, 

And the Aronia by the river 
Lighted up the swarming shad. 

And the bulging nets swept shoreward, 
With their silver-sided haul. 

Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, 
He was merriest of them all. 

When, among the jovial buskers, 
Love stole in at Labor's side. 

With the lusty airs of P^ngland 
Soft his Celtic measures vied. 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake, 
And the merry fair's carouse ; 

Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 

And the Woman of Three Cows, 

By the blazing hearths of winter. 
Pleasant seemed his simple tales, 

Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends 
And the mountain myths of Wales, 



How the souls in Purgatory 

Scrambled up from fate forlorn, 

On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder. 
Slyly hitched to Satan's horn. 

Of the fiddler who at Tara 

Played all night to ghosts of kings ; 
Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies 

Dancing in their moorland rings ! 

Jolliest of our birds of singing. 

Best he loved the Bob-o-link. 
" Hush ! " he 'd say, " the tipsy fairies 1 

Hear the little folks in drink ! " 

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle. 
Singing through the ancient town, 

Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, 
Hath Tradition handed down. 

Not a stone his grave discloses ; 

But if yet his spirit walks, 
'T is beneath the trees he planted, 

And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks ; 

Green memorials of the gleeman ! 

Linking still the river-shores. 
With their shadows cast by sunset. 

Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores ! 

When .the Father of his Country 

Through the north-land riding came, 

And the roofs were starred with banners, 
And the steeples rang acclaim, — 

When each war-scarred Continental, 
Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, 

Waved his rusted sword in welcome, 
And shot off his old king's-arm, — 

Slowly passed that august Presence 

Down the thronged and shouting street ; 

Village girls as white as angels 
Scattering flowers aromid his feet. 

Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow 
Deepest fell, his rein he drew : 

On his stately head, uncovered. 
Cool and soft the west-wind blew. 

And he stood up in his stirrups, 
Looking up and looking down 

On the hills of Gold and Silver 
Rimming round the little town, — 



5S 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY I^OEMS 



On the river, full of sunshine, 

To the lap of greenest vales 
Winding down from wooded headlands, 

Willow-skii'ted, white with sails. 

And he said, the landscape sweeping 
Slowly with his ungloved hand, 

" I have seen no prospect fairer 
In this goodly Eastern land." 

Then the bugles of his escort 
Stirred to life the cavalcade : 

And that head, so bare and stately. 
Vanished down the depths of shade. 

Ever since, in town and farm-house. 
Life has had its ebb and flow ; 

Thrice hath passed the human harvest 
To its garner green and low. 

But the trees the gleeman planted, 

Tlirough the changes, changeless stand 

As the marble calm of Tadmor 
Mocks the desert's shifting sand. 

Still the level moon at rising 
Silvers o'er each stately shaft ; 

Still beneath them, half in shadow, 
Singing, glides the pleasure craft ; 

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded. 
Love and Youth together stray ; 

While, as heart to heart beats faster. 
More and more their feet delay. 

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, 
On the open hillside wrought, 

Singing, as he drew his stitclies. 
Songs his German masters taught. 

Singing, with his gray hair floating 
Round his rosy ample face, — 

Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen 
Stitch and hammer in his place. 

All the pastoral lanes so grassy 
Now are Traffic's dusty streets ; 

From the village, grown a city, 
Fast the rural grace retreats. 

But, still green, and tall, and stately. 
On the river's winding shores. 

Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores. 



THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 
An incident of the Sepoy mutiny. 

Pipes of the misty moorlands. 

Voice of the glens and hills ; 
The droning of the torrents, 

The treble of the rills ! 
Not the braes of bloom and heather, 

Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, 

Have heard your sweetest strain ! 

Dear to the Lowland reaper, 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 

The Scottish pipes are dear ; — 
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 

O'er mountain, loch, and glade ; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The pipes at Lucknow played. 

Day by day the Indian tiger 

Louder yelled, and nearer crept ; 
Round and round the jungle-serpent 

Near and nearer circles swept. 
" Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, — 

Pray to-day ! " the soldier said ; 
" To-morrow, death 's between us 

And the wrong and shame we di^ad." 

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, 

Till their hope became despair ; 
And the sobs of low bewailing 

Filled the pauses of their prayer. 
Then up spake a Scottish maiden, 

With her ear unto the ground : 
" Dinna ye hear it ? — dinna ye hear it ? 

The pipes o' Havelock sound ! " 

Hushed the wounded man his groaning ; 

Hushed the wife her little ones ; 
Alone they heard the drum-roll 

And the roar of Sepoy guns. 
But to sounds of home and childhood 

The Highland ear was true ; — 
As her mother's cradle-crooning 

The mountain pipes she knew. 

Like the march of soundless music 
Through the vision of the seer. 

More of feeling than of hearing, 
Of the heart tlian pf the ear. 

She knew the droning pibroch, 



TELLING THE BEES 



59 



She knew the Campbell's call : 
" Hark ! hear ye no MacGregor's, 
The grandest o' them all ! " 

Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless. 

And they caught the sound at last ; 
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee 

Rose and fell the piper's blast ! 
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 

Mingled woman's voice and man's ; 
" God be praised ! — the march of Have- 
lock ! 

The piping of the clans ! " 

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 

Sharp and shrill as swords at strife. 
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call. 

Stinging all the air to life. 
But when the far-off dust-cloud 

To plaided legions grew, 
Full tenderly and blithesomely 

The pipes of rescue blew ! 

Round the silver domes of Lucknow, 

Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, 
Breathed the air to Britons dearest. 

The air of Auld Lang Syne. 
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums 

Rose that sweet and homelike strain ; 
And the tartan clove the turban. 

As the Goomtee cleaves the plain 

Dear to the corn-land reaper 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 

The piper's song is dear. 
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch 

O'er mountain, glen, and glade ; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The Pipes at Lucknow played ! 

TELLING THE BEES 

A remarkable custom, brought from the Old 
Country, formerly prevailed in the rural dis- 
tricts of New England. On the death of a 
member of the family, the bees were at once 
informed of the event, and their hives dressed 
in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed 
to be necessary to prevent the swarms from 
leaving their hives and seeking a new home. 
[The scene is minutely that of the Whittier 
homestead.] 

Here is the place ; right over the hill 
Runs the path I took ; 



You can see the gap in the old wall still, 
And the stepping-stones in the shallow 
brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red- 
barred, 
And the poplars tall ; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle- 
yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the 
wall. 

There are the beeliives ranged in the 
sun ; 
And down by the bruik 
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed- 
o'errun. 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow ; 
And the same rose blows, and the same 
sun glows, 
And the same brook sings of a year 
ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the 
breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees. 

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 

I mind me how with a lover's care 

From my Sunday coat 
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my 
hair. 
And cooled at the brookside my brow 
and throat. 

Since we parted, a month had passed, — 

To love, a year ; 
Down through the beeches I looked at last 

On the little red gate and the well-sweep 



I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain 

Of light through the leaves, 
The sundown's blaze on her window-pane. 

The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 

The house and the trees. 
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the 
door, — 

Nothing changed but the hives of bees. 



6o 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back. 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, 

Draping each hive with a shred of black. 

Trembling, I listened : the summer sun 

Had the chill of snow ; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of 
one 

Gone on the journey we all must go ! 

Then I said to myself, " My Mary weeps 

For the dead to-day : 
Haply her blind old gi-andsire sleeps 

The fret and the pain of his age away." 

But her dog whined low ; on the doorway 
sill, 

With his cane to his chin, 
The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 

Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 

And the song she was singing ever since 

In my ear sounds on : — 
" Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 

Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 



THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON 
AVERY 

In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay 
from 1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony 
Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher 
■was Avery's companion and survived to tell the 
tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2, gives further 
Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and sug- 
gests the title of the poem. 

When the reaper's task was ended, and the 

summer wearing late. 
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with 

his wife and children eight, 
Dropping down the river-harbor in the 

shallop " Watch and Wait." 

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow 

summer-morn. 
With the newly planted orchards dropping 

their fruits first-born, 
And the home-roofs like brown islands 

amid a sea of corn. 

Broad meadows reached out seaward the 
tided creeks between, 



And hills rolled wave-like inland, with 
oaks and walnnts green ; — 

A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes 
had never seen. 

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where 

duty led. 
And the voice of God seemed calling, to 

break the living bread 
To the souls of fishers starving on the 

rocks of Marblehead. 

All day they sailed : at nightfall the 
pleasant land-breeze died, 

The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry 
lights denied, 

And far and low the thunder of tempest 
prophesied ! 

Blotted out were all the coast - lines, 

gone were rock, and wood, and 

sand ; 
Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the 

rudder in his hand, 
And questioned of the darkness what was 

sea and what was land. 

And the preacher heard his dear ones, 
nestled round him, weeping sore : 

" Never heed, my little children ! Christ 
is walking on before 

To the pleasant land of heaven, where the 
sea shall be no more." 

All at once the great cloud parted, like a 

curtain drawn aside, 
To let down the torch of lightning on the 

terror far and wide ; 
And the thunder and the whirlwind together 

smote the tide. 

There was wailing in the shallop, woman's 

wail and man's despair, 
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks 

so sharp and bare. 
And, through it all, the murmur of Father 

Avery's prayer. 

From his struggle in the darkness with the 

wild waves and the blast. 
On a rock, where every billow broke above 

him as it passed, 
Alone, of all his household, the man of 

God was cast. 



THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY 



There a comrade heard him praying, in the 

pause of wave and wind : 
" All my own have gone before me, and I 

linger just behind ; 
Xot for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy 

ransomed fiiid ! 

"In this night of death I challenge the 

promise of Thy word ! — 
Let me see the great salvation of which 

mine ears have heard ! — 
Let me pass from hence forgiven, through 

the grace of Christ, our Lord ! 

" Li the baptism of these waters wash 
white my every sin, 

And let me follow up to Thee my house- 
hold and my kin ! 

Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let 
me enter in ! " 

When the Christian sings his death-song, 
all the listening heavens draw near, 

And the angels, leaning over the walls of 
crystal, hear 

How the notes so faint and broken swell to 
music in God's ear. 

The ear of God was open to His servant's 

last request ; 
As the strong wave swept him downward 

the sweet hymn upward pressed. 
And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, 

to its rest. 

There was wailing on the mainland, from 

the rocks of Marblehead ; 
In the stricken church of Newbury the notes 

of prayer were read ; 
And long, by board and hearthstone, the 

living mourned the dead. 

And still the fishers outbound, or scudding 

from the squall, 
With grave and reverent faces, the ancient 

tale recall. 
When they see the white waves breaking 

on the Rock of Avery's Fall ! 

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE 
OF NEWBURY 

"Concerning' y" Amphisbsena, as soon as I 
received your commands, I made diligent in- 
quiry : ... he assures me y' it had really two 



heads, one at each end; two mouths, twostinga 
or tong-ues." — Rev. Cheistopher Toppan to 
Cotton Mather. 

Far away in the twilight time 
Of every people, in every clime. 
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, 
Born of water, and air, and fire, 
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud 
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood. 
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, 
Through dusk tradition and ballad age. 
So from the childhood of Newbury town 
And its time of fable the tale comes down 
Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, 
The Amphisbseua, the Double Snake ! 

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, 
Consider that strip of Christian earth 
On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, 
Full of terror and mj^stery, 
Half redeemed from the evil hold 
Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, 
Wliich drank with its lips of leaves the dew 
When Time was young, and the world was 

new. 
And wove its shadows with sun and moon, 
Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and 

hewn. 
Think of the sea's dread monotone. 
Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood 

blown. 
Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the 

North, 
Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, 
And the dismal tales the Lidian told. 
Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew 

cold. 
And he shrank from the tawny wizard 

boasts, 
And the hovering shadows seemed full of 

ghosts. 
And above, below, and on every side, 
The fear of his creed seemed verified ; — 
And think, if his lot were now thine own. 
To grope with terrors nor named nor known, 
How laxer muscle and Aveaker nerve 
And a feebler faith thy need might serve ; 
And own to thyself the wonder more 
That the snake had two heads, and not a 

score ! 

Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen 
Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, 
Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, 



62 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock, 
Nothing on record is left to show ; 
Only the fact that he lived, we know, 
And left the cast of a double head 
In the scaly mask wliich he yearly shed. 
For he carried a head where his tail should 

be, 
And the two, of course, could never agree. 
But wriggled about with main and miglit. 
Now to the left and now to the right ; 
Pulling and twisting this way and that. 
Neither knew what the other was at. 

A snake with two heads, lurking so near ! 
Judge of the wonder, guess at tlie fear ! 
Think what ancient gossips might say. 
Shaking their heads in their dreary way. 
Between the meetings on Sabbatli-day ! 
How urchins, searching at day's decline 
The Common Pasture for sheep or kine. 
The terrible double-ganger heard 
In leafy rustle or whir of bird ! 
Think what a zest it gave to the sport, 
In berry-time, of the younger soi t. 
As over pastures blackberry-twined, 
Reuben and Dorotliy lagged behind, 
And closer and closer, for fear of harm. 
The maiden clung to her lover's arm ; 
And how the spark, who was forced to stay, 
By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of 

day. 
Thanked the snake for the fond delay ! 

Far and wide the tale was told. 

Like a snowball growing while it rolled. 

The nurse huslied with it the baby's cry ; 

And it served, in the worthy minister's eye, 

To paint the primitive serpent by. 

Cotton Mather came galloping down 

All the way to Newbury town. 

With his eyes agog and his ears set wide. 

And his marvellous inkhorn at his side ; 

Stirring the while in the shallow pool 

Of his brains for the lore he learned at 

school. 
To garnish the story, with here a streak 
Of Latin and there another of Greek : 
And the tales he heard and the notes he 

took. 
Behold ! are they not in his Wonder-Book ? 

Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. 
If the snake does not, the tale runs still 
In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. 
And still, whenever husband and wife 



Publish the shame of their daily strife. 
And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain 
At either end of the marriage-chain. 
The gossips say with a knowing shake 
Of their gray heads, " Look at the Double 

Snake ! 
One in body and two in will. 
The Amphisbseuft is living still ! " 



MABEL MARTIN 

A HARVEST IDYL 

Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Ames- 
bury, Mass., was tried and executed for the 
alleg-ed crime of witchcraft. Her home was in 
what is now known as Pleasant Valley on the 
Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way, 
where, tradition says, an attempt was made to 
assassinate Sir Edmund Andros on his way 
to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pema- 
quid, which was frustrated by a warning' timely 
given. Goody Martin was the only woman 
hanged on the north side of the Merrimac 
during- the dreadful delusion. The aged wife 
of Jiidg-e Bradbury, who lived on the other side 
of the Powow River, was imprisoned and would 
have been put to death but for the collapse of 
the hideous persecution. 

The substance of the poem which follows 
was published under the name of The Witch' s 
Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 
1875 my publishers desired to issue it with illus- 
trations, and I then enlarged it and otherwise 
altered it to its present form. The principal 
addition was in the verses which constitute 
Part I. 

PROEM 

I CALL the old time back : I bring my 

lay 
In tender memory of the summer day 
When, where our native river lapsed away, 

We dreamed it over, while the thrushes 

made 
Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees 

laid 
On warm noonlights the masses of their 

shade. 

And she was with us, living o'er again 
Her life in ours, despite of years and 

pain, — 
The Autumn's brightness after latter rain. 



MABEL MARTIN 



63 



Beautiful in her holy peace as one 

Who stands, at evening, when the work is 

done. 
Glorified in the setting of the sun ! 

Her memory makes our common landscape 

seem 
Fairer than any of which painters dream ; 
Lights the brown hills and sings in every 

stream ; 

For she whose speech was always truth's 

pure gold 
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends 

told. 
And loved with us the beautiful and old, 

I. THE RIVER VALLEY 

Across the level tableland, 
A grassy, rarely trodden way, 
With thinnest skirt of birchen spray 

And stunted growth of cedar, leads 
To where you see the dull plain fall 
Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all 

The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink 
The over-leaning harebells swing. 
With roots half bare the pine-trees cling ; 

And, through the shadow looking west. 
You see the wavering river flow 
Along a vale, that far below 

Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills 
And glimmering water-line between. 
Broad fields of corn and meadows green, 

And fruit-bent orchards grouped around 
Tlie low brown roofs and painted eaves. 
And chimney-tops half hid in leaves. 

No warmer valley hides behind 

Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and 

bleak ; 
No fairer river comes to seek 

The wave-sung welcome of the sea, 
Or mark the northmost border line 
Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine. 

Here, ground-fast in their native fields, 
Untempted by the city's gain, 
The quiet farmer folk remain 



Who bear the pleasant name of Friends, 
And keep their fathers' gentle ways 
And simple speech of Bible days ; 

In whose neat homesteads woman holds 
With modest ease her equal place. 
And wears upon her tranquil face 

The look of one who, merging not 
Her self-hood in another's will. 
Is love's and duty's handmaid still. 

Pass with me down the path that winds 
Through birches to the open land, 
Where, close upon the river strand 

You mark a cellar, vine o'errun, 

Above whose wall of loosened stones 
The sumach lifts its reddening cones, 

And the black nightshade's berries shine, 
And broad, unsightly burdocks fold 
The household ruin, century-old. 

Here, in the dim colonial time 

Of sterner lives and gloomier faith, 
A woman lived, tradition saith, 

Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy. 
And witched and plagued the country- 
side, 
Till at the hangman's hand she died. 

Sit with me while the westering day 
Falls slantwise down the quiet vale, 
And, haply ere yon loitering sail, 

That rounds the upper headland, falls 
Below Deer Island's pines, or sees 
Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees 

Rise black against the sinking sun, 
My idyl of its days of old. 
The valley's legend, shall be told. 

II. THE HUSKING 

It was the pleasant harvest-time. 
When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
And garrets bend beneath their load, 

And the old swallow-haunted barns, — 
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
Through which the moted sunlight 
streams. 



64 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
And the loose hay - mow's scented 
locks, — 

Are filled with summer's ripened stores, 
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
From their low scaffolds to their eaves. 

On Esek Harden's oaken floor. 

With many an autumn threshing worn, 
Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn. 

And thither came young men and -maids, 
Beneath a moon that, large and low. 
Lit that sweet eve of long ago. 

They took their places ; some by chance. 
And others by a merry voice 
Or sweet smile guided to their choice. 

How pleasantly the rising moon, 
Between the shadow of the mows, 
Looked on them through the great elm- 
boughs ! 

On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned, 
On girlhood with its solid curves 
Of healthful strength and painless nerves! 

And jests went round, and laughs that 
made 
The house-dog answer with his howl, 
And kept astir the barn-yard fowl ; 

And quaint old songs their fathers sung 
In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors. 
Ere Norman William trod their shores ; 

And tales, whose merry license shook 
The fat sides of the Saxon thane. 
Forgetful of the hovering Dane, — 

Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known, 
The charms and riddles that beguiled 
On Oxus' banks the young world's 
child,— 

That primal picture-speech wherein 
Have youth and maid the story told, 
So new in each, so dateless old, 

Recalling pastoral Ruth in her 

Who waited, blushing and demure, 
The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture. 



III. THE WITCH S DAUGHTER 

But still the sweetest voice was mute 
That river-valley ever heard 
From lips of maid or throat of bird ; 

For Mabel Martin sat apart, 

And let the hay-mow's shadow fall 
Upon the loveliest face of all. 

She sat apart, as one forbid. 

Who knew that none would condescend 
To own the Witch-wife's child a friend. 

The seasons scarce had gone their round. 
Since curious thousands thronged to see 
Her mother at the gallows-tree ; 

And mocked the prison-palsied limbs 
That faltered on the fatal stairs, 
And wan lip trembling with its prayers ! 

Few questioned of the sorrowing child, 
Or, when they saw the mother die. 
Dreamed of the daughter's agony. 

They went up to their homes that day, 
As men and Christians justified : 
God willed it, and the wretch had died I 

Dear God and Father of us all, 
Forgive our faith in cruel lies, — 
Forgive the blindness that denies ! 

Forgive thy creature when he takes. 
For the all-perfect love Thou art, 
Some grim creation of his heart. 

Cast down our idols, overturn 
Our bloody altars ; let us see 
Thyself in Thy humanity ! 

Young Mabel from her mother's grave 
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, 
And wrestled with her fate alone ; 

With love, and anger, and despair, 
The phantoms of disordered sense. 
The awful doubts of Providence ! • 

Oh, dreary broke the winter days. 
And dreary fell the winter nights 
When, one by one, the neighboring 
lights 



MABEL MARTIN 



65 



' Went out, and human sounds grew still, 
And all the phantom-peopled dark 
Closed round her hearth-fire's dj'ing 
spark. 

And summer days were sad and long, 
And sad the uncompanioned eves. 
And sadder sunset-tinted leaves. 

And Indian Summer's airs of balm ; 
She scarcely felt the soft caress, 
The beauty died of loneliness ! 

The school-boys jeered her as they passed, 
And, when she sought the house of prayer, 
Her mother's curse pursued her there. 

And still o'er many a neighboring door 
She saw the horseshoe's curved charm. 
To guard against her mother's harm : 

That mother, poor and sick and lame, 
Who daily, by the old arm-chair, 
Folded her withered hands in prayer ; — 

Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail. 
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er. 
When her dim eyes could read no more ! 

Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept 
Her faith, and trusted that her way. 
So dark, would somewhere meet the day. 

And still her weary wheel went round 
Day after day, with no relief : 
Small leisure have the poor for grief. 



IV. THE CHAMPION 

So in the shadow Mabel sits ; 

Untouched by mirth she sees and hears. 
Her smile is sadder than her tears. 

But cruel eyes have found her out, 
And cruel lips repeat her name. 
And taunt her with her mother's shame. 

She answered not with railing words. 
But drew her apron o'er her face, 
And, sobbing, glided from the place. 

And only pausing at the door. 

Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze 
Of one who, in her better days. 



Had been her warm and steady friend, 
Ere yet her mother's doom had made 
Even Esek Harden half afraid. 

He felt that mute appeal of tears. 
And, starting, with an angry frown. 
Hushed all the wicked murmurs down. 

" Good neighbors mine," he sternly said, 
" This passes harmless mirth or jest ; 
I brook no insult to my guest. 

" She is indeed her mother's child, 
But God's sweet pity ministers 
Unto no whiter soul than hers. 

" Let Goody Martin rest in peace ; 
I never knew her harm a tly, 
And witch or not, God knows — not I. 

" I know who swore her life away ; 
And as God lives, I 'd not condemn 
An Indian dog on word of them." 

The broadest lands in all the town. 
The skill to guide, the power to awe, 
Were Harden's ; and his word was law. 

None dared withstand him to his face. 
But one sly maiden spake aside: 
" The little witch is evil-eyed ! 

" Her mother only killed a cow. 
Or witched a churn or dairy-pan ; 
But she, forsooth, must charm a man ! '' 



V. IN THE SHADOW 

Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed 
The nameless terrors of the wood, 
And saw, as if a ghost pursued, 

Her shadow gliding in the moon ; 

The soft breatli of the west-wind gave 
A chill as from her mother's grave. 

How dreary seemed the silent house ! 
Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare 
Its windows had a dead man's stare ! 

And, like a gaunt and spectral hand. 
The tremulous shadow of a birch 
Reached out and touched the door's low 
porch, 



66 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



As if to lift its latch ; hard by, 
A sudden warning call she heard, 
The night-cry of a boding bird. 

She leaned against the door ; her face, 
So fair, so young, so full of pain, 
White in the moonlight's silver rain. 

The river, on its pebbled rim. 

Made music such as childhood knew ; 
The door-yard tree was whispered 
through 

By voices such as childhood's ear 
Had heard in moonlights long ago ; 
And through the willow-boughs below 

She saw the rippled waters shine ; 
Beyond, in waves of shade and light, 
The hills rolled off into the night. 

She saw and heard, but over all 

A sense of some transforming spell, 
The shadow of her sick heart fell. 

And still across the wooded space 
The harvest lights of Harden shone, 
And song and jest and laugh went 
on. 

And he, so gentle, true, and strong, 
Of men the bravest and the best, 
Had he, too, scorned her with the 
rest? 

She strove to drown her sense of wrong. 
And, in her old and simple way. 
To teach her bitter heart to pray. 

Poor child ! the prayer, begun in faith. 
Grew to a low, despairing cry 
Of utter misery : " Let me die ! 

*' Oh ! take me from the scornful eyes, 
And hide me where the cruel speech 
And mocking finger may not reach ! 

" I dare not breathe my mother's name ; 
A daughter's right I dare not crave 
To weep above her unblest grave ! 

•* Let me not live until my heart. 
With few to pity, and with none 
To love me, hardens into stone. 



" O God ! have mercy on Thy child, 

Whose faith in Thee grows weak and 

small. 
And take me ere I lose it all ! " 

A shadow on the moonlight fell. 

And murmuring wind and wave became 
A voice whose burden was her name. 



VI. THE BETROTHAL 

Had then God heard her ? Had He 
sent 
His angel down ? In flesh and blood. 
Before her Esek Harden stood ! 

He laid his hand upon her arm : 

" Dear Mabel, this no more shall be ; 
Who scoffs at you must scoff at me. 

" You know rough Esek Harden well ; 
And if he seems no suitor gay, 
And if his hair is touched with gray, 

" The maiden gi'own shall never find 

His heart less warm than when she 

smiled. 
Upon his knees a little child ! " 

Her tears of grief were tears of joy, 
As, folded in his strong embijace, 
She looked in Esek Harden's face. 

" O truest friend of all ! " she said, 

" God bless you for your kindly thought. 
And make me worthy of my lot ! " 

He led her forth, and, blent in one. 
Beside their happy pathway ran 
The shadows of the maid and man. 

He led her through his dewy fields. 

To where the swinging lanterns glowed, 
And through the doors the busker;^ 
showed. 

" Good friends and neighbors ! " Esek said 
" I 'm weary of this lonely life ; 
In Mabel see my chosen wife ! 

" She greets you kindly, one and all ; 
The past is past, and all offence 
Falls harmless from her innocence. 



THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL 



67 



" Henceforth she stands no more alone ; 
You know what Esek Harden is ; — 
He brooks no wrong to him or bis. 

" Now let the merriest tales be told, 
And let the sweetest songs be sung 
That ever made the old heart young ! 

" For now the lost has found a home ; 
And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, 
As all the household joys return ! " 

Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon. 
Between the shadow of the mows, 
Looked on them through the great elm- 
boughs ! 

On Mabel's curls of golden hair, 
On Esek's sliaggy strength it fell ; 
And the wind whispered, " It is well ! " 



THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL 
SEWALL 

The prose version of this prophecy is "to be 
found in Sewall's The New Heaven upon the 
New Earth, 1097, quoted in Joshua Coffin's 
History of Newbury. Judge Sewall's father, 
Henry Sewall, was one of the pioneers of New- 
bury. 

Up and down the village streets 
Strange are the forms my fancy meets. 
For the thoughts and things of to-day are 

hid, 
And through the veil of a closed lid 
The ancient worthies I see again : 
I hear the tap of the elder's cane. 
And his awful periwig I see. 
And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. 
Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
His black cap hiding his whitened hair. 
Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
His face with lines of firmness wrought, 
He wears the look of a man unbought. 
Who swears to his hurt and changes not ; 
Yet, touched and softened nevertheless 
With the grace of Christian gentleness, 
The face that a child would climb to kiss ! 
True and tender and brave and just. 
That man might honor and woman trust. 

Touching and sad, a tale is told, 
Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, 



Of the fast which the good man lifelong 

kept 
With a haunting sorrow that never slept, 
As the circling year brought round the time 
Of an error that left the sting of crime, 
When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft 

courts. 
With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports, 
And spake, in the name of both, the word 
That gave the witch's neck to the cord, 
And piled the oaken planks that pressed 
The feeble life from the warlock's breast ! 
All the day long, from dawn to dawn. 
His door was bolted, his curtain drawn ; 
No foot on his silent threshold trod, 
No eye looked on him save that of God, 
As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with 

charms 
Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms. 
And, with precious proofs from the sacred 

word 
Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, 
His faith confirmed and his trust renewed 
That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued, 
Might be washed away in the mingled flood 
Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear 

blood ! 

Green forever the memory be 
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
Whom even his errors glorified, 
Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side 
By the cloudy shadows vvhifh o'er it glide ! 
Honor and praise to the Puritan 
Who the halting step of his age outran. 
And, seeing the infinite worth of man 
L) the priceless gift the Father gave. 
In the infinite love that stooped to save. 
Dared not brand his brother a slave ! 
" Who doth such wrong," he was wont to 

say. 
In his own quaint, picture-loving way, 
" Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade 
Which God shall cast down upon his head ! " 

Widely as heaven and hell, contrast 
That brave old jurist of the past 
And the cunning trickster and knave of 

courts 
Who the holy features of Truth distorts, — 
Ruling as right the will of the strong, 
Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong ; 
Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and 

weak 
Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek ; 



68 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Scoffing aside at party's nod 

Order of nature and law of God ; 

For whose dabbled ermine respect were 

waste, 
Reverence folly, and awe misplaced ; 
Justice of whom 't were vain to seek 
As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik ! 
Oh, leave the v/retch to his bribes and sins ; 
Let him rot in the web of lies he spins ! 
To the saintly soul of the early day, 
To the Christian judge, let us turn and 

say: 
" Praise and thanks for an honest man ! — 
Glory to God for the Puritan ! " 

I see, far southward, this quiet day, 
The hills of Newbury rolling away. 
With the many tints of the season gay, 
Dreamily blending in autumn mist 
Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. 
Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned. 
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, 
A stone's toss over the narrow sound. 
Inland, as far as the eye can go. 
The hills curve round like a bended bow ; 
A silver arrow from out them sprung, 
I see the shine of the Quasycung ; 
And, round and romid, over valley and 

hill, 
Old roads winding, as old roads will. 
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill ; 
And glimpses of chimneys and gabled 

eaves, 
Through green elm arches and maple 

leaves, — 
Old homesteads sacred to all that can 
Gladden or sadden the heart of man. 
Over whose thresholds of oak and stone 
Life and Death have come and gone ! 
There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, 
Great beams sag from the ceiling low. 
The dresser glitters with polished wares, 
The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs. 
And the low, broad chimney shows the 

crack 
By the earthquake made a century back. 
Up from their midst springs the village 

spire 
With the crest of its cock in the sun afire ; 
Beyond are orchards and planting lands. 
And great salt marshes and glimmering 

sands, 
And, where north and south the coast-lines 

run. 
The blink of the sea in breeze and sun 1 



I see it all like a chart unrolled, 
But my thoughts are full of the past and 

old, 
I hear the tales of my boyhood told ; 
And the shadows and shapes of early days 
Flit dimly by in the veiling haze. 
With measured movement and rhythmic 

chime 
Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. 
I think of the old man wise and good 
Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, 
(A poet who never measured rhyme, 
A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) 
And, propped on his staff of age, looked 

down. 
With his boyhood's love, on his native town. 
Where, written as if on its hills and plains. 
His burden of prophecy yet remains. 
For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind 
To read in the ear of the musing mind : — 

" As long as Plum Island, to guard the 

coast 
As God appointed, shall keep its post ; 
As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep 
Of Merrimac River, or stiu'geon leap ; 
As long as pickerel swift and slim. 
Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim ; 
As long as the annual sea-fowl know 
Their time to come and their time to go ; 
As long as cattle shall roam at will 
The green grass meadows by Turkey Hill ; 
As long as sheep shall look from the side 
Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide. 
And Parker River, and salt-sea tide ; 
As long as a wandering pigeon shall search 
The fields below from his white-oak perch, 
AVhen the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn. 
And the dry husks fall from the standing 

corn ; 
As long as Nature shall not grow old. 
Nor drop her work from her doting hold. 
And her care for the Indian corn forget, 
And the yellow rows in pairs to set ; — 
So long shall Christians here be born. 
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn ! — 
By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost. 
Shall never a holy ear be lost. 
But, husked by Death in the Planter's 

sight. 
Be sown again in the fields of light ! " 

The Island still is purple with plums. 

Up the river the salmon comes, 

The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds 



THE PREACHER 



69 



On hillside berries and marish seeds, — 

All the beautiful signs remain, 

From spring-time sowing to autumn rain 

The good man's vision returns again ! 

And let us hope, as well we can, 

That the Silent Angel who garners man 

May find some grain as of old he found 

In the human cornfield ripe and sound. 

And the Lord of the Harvest deign to 

own 
The precious seed by the fathers sown ! 



THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR 

[Suggested by reading the following passage 
in Minnesota and its Ee sources, by J. Wesley 
Bond : " As I pass slowly along the lonely 
road that leads me from thee, Selkirk, mine 
eyes do turn continually to gaze upon thy smil- 
ing, golden fields, and thy lofty towers, now 
burnished with the rays of the departing sun, 
while the sweet vesper bell reverberates afar 
and strikes so mournfidly pleasant upon mine 
ear. I feel satisfied that, though absent thou- 
sands of weary miles, my thoughts will always 
dwell on thee with rapturous emotions." At 
midnight, with the last stroke of the clock 
ushering in the 17th of December, 1801, the 
84th anniversary of Whittier's birth, the bells 
of St. Boniface rang a joyous peal.] 

Out and in the river is winding 
The links of its long, red chain, 

Through belts of dusky pine-land 
And gusty leagues of plain. 

Only, at times, a smoke-wreath 

With the drifting cloud-rack joins, — 

The smoke of the hunting-lodges 
Of the wild Assiniboins ! 

Drearily blows the north-wind 
From the land of ice and snow ; 

The eyes that look are weary. 
And heavy the hands that row. 

And with one foot on the water. 

And one upon the shore, 
The Angel of Shadow gives warning 

That day shall be no more. 

Is it the clang of wild-geese ? 

Is it the Indian's yell, 
That lends to the voice of the north- wind 

Thb tones of a far-off bell ? 



The voyageur smiles as he listens 
To the sound that grows apace ; 

Well he knows the vesper ringing 
Of the bells of St. Boniface. 

The bells of the Roman Mission, 
That call from their turrets twain, 

To the boatman on the river, 
To the himter on the plain ! 

Even so in our mortal journey 
The bitter north- winds blow, 

And thus upon life's Red River 
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. 

And when the Angel of Shadow 
Rests his feet on wave and shore, 

And our eyes grow dim with watching 
And our hearts faint at the oar, 

Happy is he who heareth 

The signal of his release 
In the bells of the Holy City, 

The chimes of eternal peace ! 



THE PREACHER 

George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, 
died at Newburyport in 1770, and was buried 
under the church which has since borne his 
name. 

Its windows flashing to the sky, 
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown, 
Far down the vale, my friend and I 
Beheld the old and quiet town ; 
The ghostly sails that out at sea 
Flapped their white wings of mystery ; 
The beaches glimmering in the sun. 
And the low wooded capes that run 
Into the sea-mist north and south ; 
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth ; 
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, 
The foam-line of the harbor-bar. 

Over the woods and meadow-lands 

A crimson-tinted shadow lay, 

Of clouds through which the setting day 

Flung a slant glory far away. 

It glittered on the wet sea-sands. 

It flamed upon the city's j)anes. 

Smote the white sails of ships that wore 

Outward or in, and glided o'er 

The steeples with their veering vanes ! 



70 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Awhile my friend with rapid search 
O'errau the landscape. " Yonder spire 
Over gray roofs, a shaft of lire ; 
What is it, pray ? " — " The Whitefield 

Church ! 
Walled about by its basement stones, 
There rest the marvellous prophet's bones." 
Then as our homeward way we walked. 
Of the great preacher's life we talked ; 
And through the mystery of our theme 
The outward glory seemed to stream. 
And Nature's self interpreted 
The doubtful record of the dead ; 
And every level beam that smote 
The sails upon the dark afloat 
A symbol of the liglit became. 
Which touched the shadows of our blame 
With tongues of Pentecostal Hame. 

Over the roofs of the pioneers 
Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 
On man and his works has passed the 

change 
Which needs must be in a century's range. 
The land lies open and warm in the sun, 
Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 
Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain. 
The wilderness gladdened with fruit and 

grain ! 
But the living faith of the settlers old 
A dead profession their children hold ; 
To the lust of office and greed of trade 
A stepping-stone is the altar made. 
The Church, to place and power the door, 
Rebukes the sin of the world no more, 
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor. 
Everywhere is the grasping hand. 
And eager adding of land to land ; 
And earth, which seemed to the fathers 

meant 
But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, — 
A nightly shelter to fold away 
When the Lord should call at the break of 

day,— 
Solid and steadfast seems to be, 
And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 

But fresh and green from the rotting roots 
Of primal forests the young growth shoots ; 
From the death of the old the new proceeds. 
And the life of truth from the rot of creeds: 
On the ladder of God, which upward leads. 
The steps of progress are human needs. 
For His judgments still are a mighty deep, 
And the eyes of His providence never sleep: 



When the night is darkest He gives the 

morn ; 
When the famine is sorest, the wine arid 

corn ! 

In the church of the wilderness Edwards 

wrought, 
Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; 
And with Thor's own hammer welded and 

bent 
The iron links of his argument, 
Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 
The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 
Yet faithful still, in his daily round 
To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick 

found, 
The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art 
Drew warmth and life from his fervent 

heart. 
Had he not seen in the solitudes 
Of his deep and dark Northampton woods 
A vision of love about him fall ? 
Not the blinding splendor which fell on 

Saul, 
But the tenderer glory that rests on them 
Who walk in the New Jerusalem, 
Where never the sun nor moon are known, 
But the Lord and His love are the light 

alone ! 
And watching the sweet, still countenance 
Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, 
Had he not treasured each broken word 
Of the mystical wonder seen and heard ; 
And loved the beautifid dreamer more 
That thus to the desert of earth she bore 
Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore ? 

As the barley-winnower, holding with pain 
Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain. 
Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze 
Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys, 
So he who had waited long to hear 
The sound of the Spirit drawing hear, 
Like that which the son of Iddo heard 
When the feet of angels the myrtles 

stirred. 
Felt the answer of prayer, at last, 
As over his church the afflatus passed. 
Breaking its sleep as breezes break 
To smi-bright ripples a stagnant lake. 

At first a tremor of silent fear, 
The creep of the flesh at danger near, 
A vague foreboding and discontent. 
Over the hearts of the people went. 



THE PREACHER 



71 



All nature warned in sounds and signs : 
The wind in the tops of the forest pines 
In the name of the Highest called to prayer, 
As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair. 
Through ceiled chambers of secret sin 
Sudden and strong the light shone in ; 
A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs 
Startled the man of title-deeds ; 
The trembling hand of the worldling shook 
The dust of years from the Holy Book ; 
..\ud the psalms of David, forgotten long. 
Took the place of the scoffer's song. 

The impulse spread like the outward course 
Of waters moved by a central force ; 
The tide of spiritual life rolled down 
From inland mountains to seaboard town. 

Prepared and ready the altar stands 
Waiting the prophet's outstretched hands 
And prayer availing, to downward call 
The fiery answer in view of all. 
Hearts are like wax in the furnace ; who 
Shall mould, and shape, and cast them 

anew? 
Lo ! by the Merrimac Whitefield stands 
In the temple that never was made by 

hands, — 
Curtains of azure, and crystal wall. 
And dome of the sunshine over all — 
A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name 
Blown about on the winds of fame ; 
Now as an angel of blessing classed, 
And now as a mad enthusiast. 
Called in his youth to sound and gauge 
The moral lapse of his race and age. 
And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
Of human frailty and perfect law ; 
Possessed by the one dread thought that 

lent 
Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
Up and down the world he went, 
A John the Baptist crying. Repent ! 

No perfect whole can our nature make ; 
Here or there the circle will break ; 
The orb of life as it takes the light 
On one side leaves the other in night. 
Never was saint so good and great 
As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate 
For the plea of the Devil's advocate. 
So, incomplete by his being's law, 
The marvellous preacher had his flaw ; 
With step unequal, and |ame with faults. 
His shade on the path of History halts. 



Wisely and well said the Eastern bard : 
Fear is easy, but love is hard, — 
Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, 
And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ; 
But he is greatest and best who can 
Worship Allah by loving man. 

Thus he, — to whom, in the painful stress 
Of zeal on fire from its own excess. 
Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small 
That man was nothing, since God was all, — 
Forgot,«as the best at times have done, 
That the love of the Lord and of man are one. 

Little to him whose feet unshod 
The thorny path of the desert trod. 
Careless of pain, so it led to God, 
Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's 

wrong. 
The weak ones trodden beneath the strong. 
Should the worm be chooser ? — the clay 

withstand 
The shaping will of the potter's hand ? 

In the Indian fable Arjoon hears 
The scorn of a god rebuke his fears : 
" Spare thy pity ! " Krishna saith ; 
" Not in thy sword is the power of death ! 
All is illusion, — loss but seems ; 
Pleasure and pain are only dreams ; 
Who deems he slayeth doth not kill ; 
Who counts as slain is living still. 
Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime ; 
Nothing dies but the cheats of time ; 
Slain or slayer, small the odds 
To each, immortal as ludra's gods ! " 

So by Savannah's banks of shade, 
The stones of his mission the preacher laid 
On the heart of the negro crushed and rent, 
And made of his blood the wall's cement ; 
Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to 

coast. 
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost ; 
And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold 
Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold. 
What could it matter, more or less 
Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness ? 
Living or dying, bond or free, 
What was time to eternity ? 

Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes ! 
Mission and church are now but dreams ; 
Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan 
To honor God through the wrong of man. 



72 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Of all his labors no trace remains 

Save the bondman lifting his hands in 

chains. 
The woof he wove in the righteous warp 
Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe 
Clothes with curses the goodly land, 
Changes its greenness and bloom to sand ; 
And a century's lapse reveals once more 
The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore. 
Father of Light ! how blind is he 
Wlio sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee 
With the blood and tears of humanity ! 

He erred : shall we count His gifts as 

naught ? 
Was the work of God in liim unwrought ? 
The servant may through his deafness err, 
And blind may be God's messenger ; 
But the errand is sure they go upon, — 
The word is spoken, the deed is done. 
Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good 
That Solomon bowed to gods of wood ? 
For his tempted heart and wandering feet. 
Were the songs of David less pure and 

sweet ? 
So in light and shadow tlie preacher went, 
God's erring and human instrument ; 
And the hearts of the people where he 

passed 
Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast. 
Under the spell of a voice which took 
In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook. 
And the mystical chime of the bells of gold 
On the ephod's hem of the priest of old, — 
Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe 
Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law. 

A solemn fear on the listening crowd 
Fell like the shadow of a cloud. 
The sailor reeling from out the ships 
Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips 
Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips. 
Listened the fisherman rude and hard. 
The calker rough from the builder's yard ; 
The man of the market left his load. 
The teamster leaned on his bending goad, 
The maiden, and youth beside her, felt 
Their hearts in a closer union melt. 
And saw the flowers of their love in bloom 
Do^vn the endless vistas of life to come. 
Old age sat feebly brushing away 
From his ears the scanty locks of gray ; 
And careless boyhood, living the free 
Unconscious life of bird and tree, 
Suddenly wakened to a sense 



Of sin and its guilty consequence. 
It was as if an angel's voice 
Called the listeners up for their final choice ; 
As if a strong hand rent apart 
The veils of sense from soul and heart, 
Showing in light ineffable 
The joys of heaven and woes of hell ! 
All about in the misty air 
The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer; 
The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge. 
The water's lap on its gravelled edge. 
The wailing pines, and, far and faint, 
The wood-dove's note of sad complaint, — 
To the solemn voice of the preacher lent 
An undertone as of low lament ; 
And the rote of the sea from its sandy coast, 
On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost, 
Seemed the murmurous somid of the judg- 
ment host. 

Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept. 
As that storm of passion above them swept, 
And, comet-like, adding flame to flame. 
The priests of the new Evangel came, — 
Davenport, flashing upon the crowd. 
Charged like summer's electric cloud. 
Now holding the listener still as death 
With terrible warnings under breath, 
Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed 
The vision of Heaven's beatitude ! 
And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound 
Like a monk's with leathern girdle round, 
Wild with the toss of unshorn hair, 
And wringing of hands, and eyes aglare. 
Groaning under the world's despair ! 
Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose, 
Prophesied to the empty pews 
That gourds would wither, and mushrooms 

die. 
And noisiest fountains run soonest dry, 
Like the spring that gushed in Newbury 

Street, 
Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet, 
A silver shaft in the air and light. 
For a single day, then lost in night. 
Leaving only, its place to tell, 
Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. 
With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool, 
Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule. 
No longer harried, and cropped, and 

fleeced, 
Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest, 
But by wiser counsels left at ease 
To settle quietly on his lees. 
And, self-concentred, to count as done 



THE PREACHER 



73 



The work which his fathers well begun, 
In silent protest of letting alone, 
The Quaker kept the way of his own, — 
A non-conductor among the wires, 
With coat of asbestos proof to fires. 
And quite unable to naend his pace 
To catch the falling manna of grace, 
He hugged the closer his little store 
Of faith, and silently piayed for more. 
And vague of creed and barren of rite. 
But holding, as in his Master's sight. 
Act and thought to the inner light, 
The round of his simple duties walked. 
And strove to live what the others talked. 

And who shall marvel if evil went 
Step by step with the good intent. 
And with love and meekness, side by side, 
Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride ? — 
That passionate longings and fancies vain 
Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain ? 
That over the holy oracles 
Folly sported witli cap and bells ? 
That goodly women and learned men 
Marvelling told with tongue and pen 
How unweaned children chirped like birds 
Texts of Scripture and solemn words. 
Like the infant seers of the rocky glens 
In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes : 
Or baby Lamas who pray and preach 
From Tartar cradles in Buddha's speech ? 

In the war which Truth or Freedom wages 
With impious fraud and the wrong of ages. 
Hate and malice and self-love mar 
The notes of triumph with painful jar, 
And the helping angels turn aside 
Their sorrowing faces the shame to hide- 
Never on custom's oiled grooves 
The world to a higher level moves. 
But grates and grinds with friction hard 
On granite boulder and flinty shard. 
The heart must bleed before it feels. 
The pool be troubled before it heals ; 
Ever by losses the right must gain. 
Every good have its birth of pain ; 
The active Virtues blush to find 
The Vices wearing their badge behind, 
And Graces and Charities feel the fire 
Wherein the sins of the age expire ; 
The fiend still rends as of old he rent 
The tortured body from which he went. 

But Time tests all. In the over-drift 
And flow of the Nile, with its annual gift, 



Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk ? 
Who thinks of the drowned -out Coptic 

monk ? 
The tide that loosens the temple's stones, 
And scatters the sacred ibis-bones, 
Drives away from the valley-land 
That Arab robber, the wandering sand, 
Moistens the fields that know no rain, 
Fringes the desert with belts of grain. 
And bread to the sower brings again. 
So the flood of emotion deep and strong 
Troubled the land as it swept along, 
But left a result of holier lives. 
Tenderer mothers and worthier wives. 
The husband and father whose children fled 
And sad wife wept when his drimken tread 
Frightened peace from his roof-tree's shade, 
And a rock of off^ence his hearthstone made, 
In a strength that was not his own began 
To rise from the brute's to the plane of 

man. 
Old friends embraced, long held apart 
By e\Tl counsel and pride of heart ; 
And penitence saw through misty tears. 
In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears. 
The promise of Heaven's eternal years, — 
The peace of God for the world's an- 
noy, — 
Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy ! 

Lender the church of Federal Street, 
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, 
Walled about by its basement stones, 
Lie the marvellous preacher's bones. 
No saintly honors to them are shown, 
No sign nor miracle have they known ; 
But he who passes the ancient church 
Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch, 
And ponders the wonderful life of him 
Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. 
Long shall the traveller strain his eye 
From the railroad car, as it plunges by, 
And the vanishing town behind him search 
For the slender spire of the Whitefield 

Church ; 
And feel for one moment the ghosts of 

trade. 
And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid. 
By the thought of that life of pure intent. 
That voice of warning yet eloquent. 
Of one on the errands of angels sent. 
And if where he labored the flood of sin 
Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in. 
And over a life of time and sense 
The church-spires lift their vain defence, 



74 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



As if to scatter the bolts of God 
With the points of Calvin's thunder-rod, 
Still, as the gem of its civic crown. 
Precious beyond the world's renown, 
His memory hallows the ancient town ! 



THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA 

111 the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indi- 
ans, who had been making war upon the New 
Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in 
numbers by fighting and famine that they 
agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at 
Dover ; but the peace was broken in the fall 
of 1676. The famous chief, Squando, was the 
principal negotiator on the part of the savages. 
He had taken up the hatchet to revenge the 
brutal treatment of his child by drunken white 
sailors, which caused its death. 

It not unfrequently happened during the 
Border wars that young white children were 
adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly 
treated that they were unwilling to leave the 
free, wild life of the woods ; and in some in- 
stances they utterly refused to go back with 
their parents to their old homes and civilization. 

Raze these long blocks of brick and stone, 
These huge mill-monsters overgrown ; 
Blot out the humbler piles as well. 
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell 
The weaving genii of the bell ; 
Tear from the wild Coeheco's track 
The dams that hold its torrents back ; 
And let the loud-rejoicing fall 
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall ; 
And let the Indian's paddle play 
On the unbridged Piscataqua ! 
Wide over hill and valley spread 
Once more the forest, dnsk and dread, 
With here and there a clearing cut 
From the walled shadows round it shut ; 
Each with its farm-house builded rude, 
By English yeoman squared and hewed, 
And the grim. Hankered block-house bound 
With bristling palisades around. 
So, haply shall before thine eyes 
The dusty veil of centuries rise, 
The old, strange scenery overlay 
The tamer pictures of to-day. 
While, like the actors in a play. 
Pass in their ancient guise along 
The figures of my border song : 
What time beside Coeheco's flood 
The white man and the red man stood. 
With words of peace and brotherhood ; 



When passed the sacred calumet 
From lip to lip with lire-draught wet, 
And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's 

smoke 
Through the gray beard of Waldron 

broke. 
And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea ' 

For mercy, struck the haughty key 
Of one who held, in any fate, 
His native pride inviolate ! 

" Let your ears be opened wide ! 
He who speaks has never lied. 
Waldron of Piscataqua, 
Hear what Squando has to say ! 

" Squando shnts his eyes and sees, 
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees. 
In his wigwam, still as stone, 
Sits a woman all alone, 

" Wampum beads and birchen strands 
Dropping from her careless hands, 
Listening ever for the fleet 
Patter of a dead child's feet ! 

" When the moon a year ago 
Told the flowers the time to blow, 
In that lonely wigwam smiled 
Menewee, our little child. 

" Ere that moon grew thin and old, 
He was lying still and cold ; 
Sent before us, weak and small, 
When the Master did not call ! 

" On his little grave I lay ; 
Three times went and came the day, 
Thrice above me blazed the noon. 
Thrice upon me wept the moon. 

" In the third night-watch I heard, 
Far and low, a spirit-bird ; 
Very mournful, very wild, 
Sang the totem of my child. 

" ' Menewee, poor Menewee, 
Walks a path he cannot see : 
Let the white man's wigwam light 
With its blaze his steps aright. 

" * All-uncalled, he dares not show 
Empty hands to Manito : 
Better gifts he cannot bear 
Than the scalps his slayers wear.* 



THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA 



75 



" All the while the totem sang, 
Lightning blazed and thunder rang ; 
And a black cloud, reaching high. 
Pulled the white moon from the sky. 

" I, the medicine-man, whose ear 
All that spirits hear can hear, — 
I, whose eyes are wide to see 
All the things that are to be, — 

" Well I knew the dreadful signs 
In the whispers of the pines, 
In the river roaring loud. 
In the mutter of the cloud. 

" At the breaking of the day, 
From the grave I passed away ; 
Flowers bloomed round me, birds 

glad, 
But my heart was hot and mad. 

" There is rust on Squando's knife 
From the warm, red springs of life ; 
On the funeral hemlock-trees 
Many a scalp the totem sees. 

" Blood for blood ! But evermore 
Squando's heart is sad and sore ; 
And his poor squaw waits at home 
For the feet that never come ! 

" Waldron of Cocheco, hear ! 
Squando speaks, who laughs at fear ; 
Take the captives he has ta'en ; 
Let the land have peace again ! " 

As the words died on his tongue. 
Wide apart his warriors swung ; 
Parted, at the sign he gave, 
Right and left, like Egypt's wave. 

And, like Israel passing free 
Through the prophet-charmed sea, 
Captive mother, wife, and child 
Through the dusky terror filed. 

One alone, a little maid, 
Middleway her steps delayed, 
Glancing, with quick, troubled sight, 
Round about from red to white. 

Then his hand the Indian laid 

On the little maiden's head, 
Lightly from her forehead fair 
Smoothing back her yellow hair. 



" Gift or favor ask I none ; 
What I have is all my own : 
Never yet the birds have sung, 
' Squando hath a beggar's tongue.* 

" Yet for her who waits at home, 
For the dead who cannot come. 
Let the little Gold-hair be 
In the place of Menewee ! 

" Mishauock, my little star ! 
Come to Saco's pines afar ; 
Where the sad one waits at home, 
Wequashim, my moonlight, come ! " 

"What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a 

child 
Christian-born to heathens wild ? 
As God lives, from Satan's hand 
I will pluck her as a brand ! " 

" Hear me, white man ! " Squando cried ; 
" Let the little one decide. 
Wequashim, my moonlight, say, 
Wilt thou go with me, or stay ? " 

Slowly, sadly, half afraid. 

Half regretfully, the maid 

Owned the ties of blood and race, — 

Turned from Squando's pleading face. 

Not a word the Indian spoke. 
But his wampum chain he broke. 
And the beaded wonder hung 
On that neck so fair and young. 

Silence-shod, as phantoms seem 
In the marches of a dream. 
Single-filed, the grim array 
Through the pine-trees wound away. 

Doubting, trembling, sore amazed. 
Through her tears the young child gazed 
" God preserve her ! " Waldron said ; 
" Satan hath bewitched the maid ! " 

Years went and came. At close of day 
Singing came a child from play, 
Tossing from her loose-locked head 
Gold in sunshine, brown in shade. 

Pride was in the mother's look, 
But her head she gravely shook. 
And with lips that fondly smiled 
Feigned to chide her truant child. 



76 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Unabashed, the maid began : 
" Up and down the brook I ran, 
Where, beneath the bank so steep. 
Lie the spotted trout asleep. 

" ' Chip ! ' went squirrel on the wall, 
After me I heard him call, 
And the cat-bird on the tree 
Tried his best to mimic me. 

" Where the hemlocks grew so dark 
That I stopped to look and hark, 
On a log, with feather-hat, 
By the path, an Indian sat. 

" Then I cried, and ran away ; 
But he called, and bade me stay ; 
And his voice was good and mild 
As my mother's to her child. 

" And he took my wampum chain. 
Looked and looked it o'er again ; 
Gave me berries, and, beside. 
On my neck a playthmg tied." 

Straight the mother stooped to see 
What the Indian's gift might be. 
On the braid of wampum hung, 
Lo ! a cross of silver swung. 

Well she knew its graven sign, 
Squando's bird and totem pine ; 
And, a mirage of the brain. 
Flowed her childhood back again. 

Flashed the roof the sunshine through. 
Into space the walls outgrew ; 
On the Indian's wigwam-mat. 
Blossom-crowned, again she sat. 

Cool she felt the west-wind blow. 
In her ear the pines sang low. 
And, like links from out a chain. 
Dropped the years of care and pain. 

From the outward toil and din, 
From the griefs that gnaw within. 
To the freedom of the woods 
Called the birds, and winds, and floods. 

Well, O painful minister ! 
Watch thy flock, but blame not her, 
If her ear grew sharp to hear 
All their voices whispering near. 



Blame her not, as to her soul 
All the desert's glamour stole. 
That a tear for childhood's loss 
Dropped upon the Lidian's cross. 

When, that night, the Book was read, 
And she bowed her widowed head, 
And a prayer for each loved name 
Rose like incense from a flame, 

With a hope the creeds forbid 
Li her pitying bosom hid. 
To the listening ear of Heaven 
Lo ! the Indian's name was given. 

MY PLAYMATE 

[When written, this poem bore the title 
Eleanor, and when first printed The Playmate.^ 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 

Their song was soft and low ; 
Tlie blossoms in the sweet May wind 

Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
The orchard birds sang clear ; 

Tlie sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year. 

For, more to me than birds or flowers, 

My playmate left her home, 
And took with her the laughing spring, 

The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 

She laid her hand in mine : 
What more could ask the bashful boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 

She left us in the bloom of May : 

The constant years told o'er 
Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 

But she came back no more. 

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round 

Of uneventful years ; 
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring 

And reap the autumn ears. 

She lives where all the golden year 

Her summer roses blow ; 
The dusky children of the sun 

Before her come and go. 



COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION 



77 



There haply with her jewelled hands 


The minks were fish-wards, and the crows 


She smooths her silken gown, — 


Surveyors of highway, — 


No more the homespun lap wherein 




I shook the walnuts down. 


When Keezar sat on the hillside 




Upon his cobbler's form. 


The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 


With a pan of coals on either hand 


The brown nuts on the hill, 


To keep his waxed-ends warm. 


And still the May-day tlowers make sweet 




The woods of FoUymill. 


And there, in the golden weather. 




He stitched and hammered and sung ; 


The lilies blossom in the pond, 


In the brook he moistened his leather, 


The bird builds in the tree, 


In the pewter mug his tongue. 


The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 




The slow song of the sea. 


Well knew the tough old Teuton 




Who brewed the stoutest ale, 


I wonder if she thinks of them. 


And he paid the good wife's reckoning 


And how the old time seems, — 


Li the coin of song and tale. 


If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 




Are sounding in her dreams. 


The songs they still are singing 




Who dress the hills of vine. 


I see her face, I hear her voice ; 


The tales that haunt the Brocken 


Does she remember mine ? 


And whisper down the Rhine. 


And what to her is now the boy 




Who fed her father's kine ? 


Woodsy and wild and lonesome, 




The swift stream wound away, 


What cares she that the orioles build 


Through birches and scarlet maples 


For other eyes than ours, — 


Flashing in foam and spray, — 


That other hands with nuts are filled, 




And other laps with flowers ? 


Down on the sharp-horned ledges 




Plunging in steep cascade, 


playmate in the golden time ! 


Tossing its white-maned waters 


Our mossy seat is green, 


Against the hemlock's shade. 


Its fringing violets blossom yet, 




The old trees o'er it lean. 


Woodsy and wild and lonesome, 




East and west and north and south ; 


The winds so sweet with birch and fern 


Only the village of fishers 


A sweeter memory blow ; 


Down at the river's mouth ; 


And there in spring the veeries sing 




The song of long ago. 


Only here and there a clearing, 




With its farm-house rude and new, 


And still the pines of Ramoth wood 


And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, 


Are moaning like the sea, — 


Where the scanty harvest grew. 


The moaning of the sea of change 




Between myself and thee ! 


No shout of home-bound reapers. 




No vintage-song he heard. 




And on the green no dancing feet 


COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION 


The merry violin stirred. 


This ballad was written on the occasion of a 


" Why should folk be glum," said Keezar, 


Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Keezar was a 


" When Nature herself is glad. 


noted charactPF among the first settlers in the 


And the painted woods are laughing 


valley of the Merrimac. 


At the faces so sour and sad ? " 


The beaver cut his timber 


Small heed had the careless cobbler 


With patient teeth that day, 


What sorrow of heart was theirs 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Who travailed in pain with the births of 


To a cobbler Minnesinger 


God, 


The marvellous stone gave he, — 


And planted a state with prayers, — 


And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, 




Who brought it over the sea. 


Hunting of witches and warlocks, 




Smiting the heathen horde, — 


He held up that mystic lapstone, 


One hand on the mason's trowel. 


He held it up like a lens, 


And one on the soldier's sword ! 


And he counted the long years coming 




By twenties and by tens. 


But give him his ale and cider. 




Give him his pipe and song, 


" One hundred years," quoth Keezar, 


Little he cared for Church or State, 


« And fifty have I told : 


Or the balance of right and wrong. 


Now open the new before me. 




And shut me out the old ! " 


" 'T is work, work, work," he muttered, — 




"And for rest a snuffle of psalms ! " 


Like a cloud of mist, the blackness 


He smote on his leathern apron 


Rolled from the magic stone. 


With his brown and waxen palms. 


And a marvellous picture mingled 




The unknown and the known. 


" Oh for the purple harvests 




Of the days when I was young ! 


Still ran the stream to the river. 


For the merry grape-stained maidens, 


And river and ocean joined ; 


And the pleasant songs they sung ! 


And there were the bluffs and the blue sea- 
line. 
And cold north hills behind. 


" Oh for the breath of vineyards. 


Of apples and nuts and wine ! 




For an oar to row and a breeze to blow 


But the mighty forest was broken 


Down, the grand old river Rhine ! " 


By many a steepled town, 




By many a white-walled farm-house, 


A tear in his blue eye glistened. 


And many a garner brown. 


And dropped on his beard so gray. 




" Old, old am I," said Keezar, 


Turning a score of mill-wheels. 


" And the Rhine flows far away ! " 


The stream no more ran free ; 




White sails on the winding river, 


But a cunning man was the cobbler ; 


White sails on the far-olf sea. 


He could call the birds from the 




trees. 


Below in the noisy village 


Charm the black snake out of the 


The flags were floating gay. 


ledges, 


And shone on a thousand faces 


And bring back the swarming bees. 


The light of a holiday. 


All the virtues of herbs and metals, 


Swiftly the rival ploughmen 


All the lore of the woods, he knew. 


Turned the brown earth from their shares; 


And the arts of the Old World mingled 


Here were the farmer's treasures, 


With the marvels of the New. 


There were the craftsman's wares. 


Well he knew the tricks of magic, 


Golden the good wife's butter, 


And the lapstone on his knee 


Ruby her currant-wine ; 


Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles 


Grand were the strutting turkeys. 


Or the stone of Doctor Dee. 


Fat were the beeves and swine. 


For the mighty master Agrippa 


Yellow and red were the apples. 


Wrought it with spell and rhyme 


And the ripe pears russet-brown. 


From a fragment of mystic moonstone 


And the peaches had stolen blushes 


In the tower of Nettesheim. 


From the girls who shook them down. 



AMY WENTWORTH 



79 



And with blooms of hill and wild wood, 

That shame the toil of art, 
Mingled the gorgeous blossoms 

Of the garden's tropic heart. 

" What is it I see ? " said Keezar : 

"Am I here, or am I there ? 
Is it a fete at Bingen ? 

Do I look on Frankfort fair ? 

" But where are the clowns and puppets. 
And imps with horns and tail ? 

And where are the Rhenish flagons ? 
And where is the foaming ale ? 

" Strange things, I know, will happen, — 
Strange things the Lord permits ; 

But that droughty folk should be jolly 
Puzzles my poor old wits. 

" Here are smiling manly faces, 
And the maiden's step is gay ; 

Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drink- 
ing. 
Nor mopes, nor fools, are they. 

" Here 's pleasure without regretting, 

And good without abuse. 
The holiday and the bridal 

Of beauty and of use. 

" Here 's a priest and there is a Quaker, 

Do the cat and dog agree ? 
Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood ? 

Have they cut down the gallows-tree ? 

" Would the old folk know their children ? 

Would they own the graceless town. 
With never a ranter to worry 

And never a witch to drown ? " 

Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, 
Lauorhed like a school-boy gay ; 

Tossing his arms above him. 
The lapstoue rolled away. 

It rolled down the rugged hillside, 
It spun like a wheel bewitched. 

It plunged through the leaning willows, 
And into the river pitched. 

There, in the deep, dark water, 

The magic stone lies still, 
Under the leaning willows 

In the shadow of the hill. 



But oft the idle fisher 

Sits on the shadowy bank, 
And his dreams make marvellous pictures 

Where the wizard's lapstone sank. 

And still, in the summer twilights, 

When the river seems to run 
Out from the inner glory. 

Warm with the melted sun. 

The weary mill-girl lingers 

Beside the charmed stream. 
And the sky and the golden water 

Shape and color her dream. 

Fair wave the sunset gardens. 

The rosy signals fly ; 
Her homestead beckons from the cloud, 

And love goes sailing by. 



AMY WENTWORTH 

TO WILLIAM BRADFORD 

As they who watch by sick-beds find relief 
Unwittingly from the great stress of grief 
And anxious care, in fantasies outwrought 
From the hearth's embers flickering low, or 

caught 
From whispering wind, or tread of passing 

feet, 
Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet 
Snatch of old song or romance, whence or 

why 
They scarcely know or ask, — so, thou and I, 
Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is 

strong 
In the endurance which outwearies Wrong, 
With meek persistence baffling brutal force. 
And trusting God against the universe, — 
We, doomed to watch a strife we may not 

share 
With other weapons than the patriot's 

prayer. 
Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened 

eyes. 
The awful beauty of self-sacrifice. 
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all 
Who give their loved ones for the living wall 
'Twixt law and treason, — in this evil day 
May haply find, through automatic play 
Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, 
And hearten others with the strength we 

gain. 



8o 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



1 know it has been said our times require 
No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, 
No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform 
To calm the hot, mad pulses of the stoim. 
But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets 
The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, 
And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with 

these 
Some softer tints may blend, and milder 

keys 
Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us 

keep sweet, 
If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat 
The bitter harvest of our own device 
And half a century's moral cowardice. 
As Niirnberg sang while Wittenberg defied, 
And Kranach painted by his Luther's side. 
And through the war-march of the Puritan 
The silver stream of Marvell's music ran. 
So let the household melodies be sung, 
The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung, — 
So let us hold against the hosts of night 
And slavery all our vantage-ground of light. 
Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake 
From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake. 
Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, 
And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of 

man. 
And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull 
By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull, — 
But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, 
(God grant it soon !) the graceful arts of 

peace : 
No foes are conquered who the victors teach 
Their vandal manners and barbaric speech. 

And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we 

bear 
Of the great common burden our full share. 
Let none upbraid us that the waves entice 
Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint de- 
vice, 
Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen away 
From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to- 
day. 
Thus, while the east-wind keen from Lab- 
rador 
Sings in the leafless elms, and from the shore 
Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar 
Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky 
Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I 

try 
To time a simple legend to the sounds 
Of winds in the woods, and waves on peb- 
bled bounds, — 



A song for oars to chime with, such as niiglit 
Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night 
Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet 

cove 
Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they 

love. 
(So hast thou looked, when level sunset 

lay 
On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay, 
And all the spray-moist rocks and waves 

that rolled 
Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy 

gold.) 
Something it has — a flavor of the sea, 
And the sea's freedom — which reminds of 

thee. 
Its faded picture, dimly smiling down 
From the blurred fresco of the ancient 

town, 
I have not touched with warmer tints in 

vain. 
If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one 

thought from pain. 



Her fingers shame the ivory keys 

They dance so light along ; 
The bloom upon her parted lips 

Is sweeter than the song. 

O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles ! 

Her thoughts are not of thee ; 
She better loves the salted wind, 

The voices of the sea. 

Her heart is like an outbound ship 

That at its anchor swings ; 
The murmur of the stranded shell 

Is in the song she sings. 

She sings, afid, smiling, hears her praise, 
But dreams the while of one 

Who watches from his sea-blown deck 
The icebergs in the sun. 

She questions iH the winds that blow, 

And every fog-wreath dim. 
And bids the sea-birds flying north 

Bear messages to him. 

She speeds them with the thanks of men 

He perilled life to save, 
And grateful prayers like holy oil 

To smooth for him the wave. 



THE COUNTESS 



8i 



Brown Viking of the fishing-smack ! 

Fair toast of all the town ! — 
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems 

The lady's silken gown ! 

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear 

For him the blush of shame 
Who dares to set his manly gifts 

Against her ancient name. 

The stream is brightest at its spring, 

And blood is not like wine ; 
Nor honored less than he who heirs 

Is he who founds a line. 

Full lightly shall the prize be won, 

If love be Fortune's spur ; 
And never maiden stoops to him 

Who lifts himself to her. 

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, 
With stately stairways worn 

By feet of old Colonial knights 
And ladies gentle-born. 

Still green about its ample porch 

The English ivy twines, 
Trained back to show in English oak 

The herald's carven signs. 

And on her, from the wainscot old. 

Ancestral faces frown, — 
And this has worn the soldier's sword, 

And that the judge's gown. 

But, strong of will and proud as they, 

She walks the gallery floor 
As if she trod her sailor's deck 

By stormy Labrador ! 

The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side, 
And green are Eliot's bowers ; 

Her garden is the pebbled beach, 
The mosses are her flowers. 

She looks across the harbor-bar 

To see the white gulls fly ; 
His greeting from the Northern sea 

Is in their clanging cry. 

She hums a song, and dreams that 
he. 

As in its romance old. 
Shall homeward ride with silken sails 

And masts of beaten gold ! 



Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, 
And high and low mate ill ; 

But love has never known a law 
Beyond its own sweet will ! 



THE COUNTESS 

TO E. W. 

I inscribed this poem to Dr. Elias Weld of 
Haverhill, Massachusetts, to whose kindness I 
was much indebted in my boyhood. He was 
the one cultivated man in the neig-hborhood. 
His small but well-chosen library was placed at 
my disposal. He is the " wise old doctor " of 
Snow-Bound. 

Count Francois de Vipart with his cousin 
Joseph Roehemont de Poyen came to the 
United States in the early part of the present 
century. They took up their residence at 
Rocks Village on the Merrimac, where they 
both married. The wife of Count Vipart was 
Mary Ingalls, who, as my father remembered 
her, was a very lovely young girl. Her wed- 
ding dress, as described by a lady still living, 
was " pink satin with an overdress of white lace, 
and white satin slippers. " She died in less than 
a year after her niarriage. Her husband re- 
turned to his native country. He lies buried in 
the family tomb of the Viparts at Bordeaux. 
[See note at end of volume.] 

I KNOW not. Time and Space so intervene, 
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, 
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, 
Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen ; 
But, here or there, a pleasant thought of 

thee. 
Like an old friend, all day has been with me. 
The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand 
Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder- 
land 
Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet 
Keeps green the memory of his early debt. 
To-day, when truth and falsehood speak 

their words 
Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth 

of swords. 
Listening with quickened heart and ear in- 
tent 
To each sharp clause of that stern argu- 
ment, 
I still can hear at times a softer note 
Of the old pastoral music round me float. 
While through the hot gleam of our civil 
strife 



82 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Looms the green mirage of a simpler life. 
As, at his alien post, the sentinel 
Drops the old bucket in the homestead well, 
And hears old voices in the winds that toss 
Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss, 
So, in our trial-time, and under skies 
Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise, 
I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray 
To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day ; 
And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams 
Shades the brown woods or tints the sun- 
set streams, 
The country doctor in the foreground seems, 
Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes 
Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and 

pains. 
I could not paint the scenery of my song. 
Mindless of one who looked thereon so 

long ; 
Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round. 
Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and 

knew the sound 
Of each small brook, and what the hillside 

trees 
Said to the winds that touched their leafy 

keys ; 
Who saw so keenly and so well could paint 
The village-folk, with all their humors 

quaint, — 
The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. 
Grave and erect, with white hair backward 

blown ; 
The tough old boatman, half amphibious 

grown ; 
The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's 

tale. 
And the loud straggler levying his black- 
mail, — 
Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, 
All that lies buried under fifty years. 
To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay. 
And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay. 



Over the wooded northern ridge, 
. Between its houses brown. 
To the dark tunnel of the bridge 
The street comes straggling down. 

You catch a glimpse, through birch and 
pine. 

Of gable, roof, and porch. 
The tavern with its swinging sign, 

The sharp horn of the church. 



The river's steel-blue crescent curves 

To meet, in ebb and flow, 
The single broken wharf that serves 

For sloop and gundelow. 

Witli salt sea-scents along its shores 

The heavy hay-boats crawl. 
The long antennae of their oars 

In lazy rise and fall. 

Along the gray abutment's wall 

The idle shad-net dries ; 
The toll-man in his cobbler's stall 

Sits smoking with closed eyes. 

You hear the pier's low undertone 
Of waves that chafe and gnaw ; 

You start, — a skipper's horn is blown 
To raise the creaking draw. 

At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds 

With slow and sluggard beat. 
Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds 

Wakes up the staring street. 

A place for idle eyes and ears, 
A cobwebbed nook of dreams ; 

Left by the stream whose waves are 
years 
The stranded village seems. 

And there, like other moss and rust, 

The native dweller clings, 
And keeps, in uninquiring trust, 

The old, dull round of things. 

The fisher drops his patient lines, 

The farmer sows his grain. 
Content to hear the murmuring pines 

Instead of railroad train. 

Go where, along the tangled steep 

That slopes against the west, 
The hamlet's buried idlers sleep 

In still profounder rest. 

Throw back the locust's flowery plume, 

The birch's pale-green scarf, 
And break the web of brier and bloom 

From name and epitaph. 

A simple muster-roll of death. 

Of pomp and romance shorn. 
The dry, old names that common breath 

Has cheapened and outworn. 



THE COUNTESS 



83 



Yet pause by one low mound, and part 

The wild vines o'er it laced, 
And read the words by rustic art 

Upon its headstone traced. 

Haply yon white-haired villager 

Of fourscore years can say 
What means the noble name of her 

Who sleeps with common clay. 

An exile from the Gascon land 

Found refuge here and rest. 
And loved, of all the village band, 

Its fairest and its best. 

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns, 
He worshipped through her eyes. 

And on the pride that doubts and scorns 
Stole in her faith's surprise. 

Her simple daily life he saw 

By homeliest duties tried, 
In all things by an untaught law 

Of fitness justified. 

For her his rank aside he laid ; 

He took the hue and tone 
Of lowly life and toil, and made 

Her simple ways his own. 

Yet still, in gay and careless ease, 

To harvest-field or dance 
He brought the gentle courtesies. 

The nameless grace of France. 

And she who taught him love not less 

From him she loved in turn 
Caught in her sweet unconsciousness 

What love is quick to learn. 

Each grew to each in pleased accord. 

Nor knew the gazing town 
If she looked upward to her lord 

Or he to her looked down. 

How sweet, when summer's day was 
o'er. 

His violin's mirth and wail, 
The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, 

The river's moonlit sail ! 

Ah ! life is brief, though love be long ; 

The altar and the bier, 
The burial hymn and bridal song, 

Were both in one short year ! 



Her rest is quiet on the hill. 
Beneath the locust's bloom ; 

Far off her lover sleeps as still 
Within his scutcheoned tomb. 

The Gascon lord, the village maid, 
In death still clasp their hands ; 

The love that levels rank and grade 
Unites their severed lauds. 

What matter whose the hillside grave. 
Or whose the blazoned stone ? 

Forever to her western wave 
Shall whisper blue Garonne ! 

O Love ! — so hallowing every soil 
That gives thy sweet flower room, 

Wherever, nursed by ease or toil. 
The human heart takes bloom ! — 

Plant of lost Eden, from the sod 

Of sinful earth unriven. 
White blossom of the trees of God 

Dropped down to us from heaven ! — 

This tangled waste of mound and stoue 

Is holy for thy sake ; 
A sweetness which is all thy own 

Breathes out from fern and brake. 

And while ancestral pride shall twine 
The Gascon's tomb with flowers. 

Fall sweetly here, O song of mine, 
With summer's bloom and showers ! 

And let the lines that severed seem 

Unite again in thee. 
As western wave and Gallic stream 

Are mingled in one sea ! 



AMONG THE HILLS 

This poem, when originally published, was 
dedicated to Annie Fields, wife of the distin- 
guished publisher, James T. Fields, of Boston, 
in grateful acknowledgment of the strength 
and inspiration I have found in her friendship 
and sjTiipathy. 

The poem in its first form was entitled The 
Wife: an Idyl of Bearcamp Water, and ap- 
peared in The Atlantic Monthly for January, 
1868. When I published the volume Among 
the Hills, in December of the same year, I ex- 
panded the Prelude and filled out also the out- 
lines of the story. 



84 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



PRELUDE 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of 

gold 
That tawny Iiicas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, 
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers 
Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind. 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the 

south, 
Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple 

leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 
Confesses it. The locust by the w.all 
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighbor- 
ing hill, 
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift 

still 
Defied the dog-star. Through the open 

door 
A drowsy smell of flowers — gray helio- 
trope. 
And white sweet clover, and shy mignon- 
ette — 
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 

No time is this for hands long over-worn 
To task their strength: and (unto Him be 

praise 
Who giveth quietness !) the stress and 

strain 
Of years that did the work of centuries 
Have ceased, and we can draw our breath 

once more 
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters 
Make glad their nooning underneath the 

elms 
With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, 
I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn 
The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dream- 
ing o'er 
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills. 
And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 
Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and 

feeling 
All their fine possibilities, how rich 
And restful even poverty and toil 



Become when beauty, harmony, and love 
Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat 
At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man 
Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock 
The symbol of a Christian chivalry 
Tender and just and generous to her 
Who clothes with grace all duty ; still, I 

know 
Too well the picture has another side, — 
How wearily the grind of toil goes on 
Where love is wanting, how the eye and 

ear 
And heart are starved amidst the plenitude 
Of nature, and how hard and colorless 
Is life without an atmosphere. I look 
Across the lapse of half a century. 
And call to mind old homesteads, where no 

flower 
Told that the spring had come, but evil 

weeds. 
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in 

the place 
Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose 
And honeysuckle, where the house walls 

seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves 
Across the curtainless windows, from whose 

panes 
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness. 
Within, the cluttered kitchen floor, un- 
washed 
(Broom-clean I think they called it); the 

best room 
Stifling with cellar-damp, shut from the air 
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless 
Save the inevitable sampler hung 
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, be- 
neath 
Impossible willows ; the wide - throated 

hearth 
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half con- 
cealing 
The piled -up rubbish at the chimney's 

back ; 
And, in sad keeping with all things about 

them, 
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen 

men, 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 
With scarce a human interest save their own 
Monotonous round of small economies. 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ; 
Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, 



AMONG THE HILLS 



85 



Treading the May-flowers with regardless 

feet ; 
For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink 
Sang not, nor winds made music in the 

leaves ; 
For them in vain October's holocaust 
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills. 
The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew- 
rent, 
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork with the least possible 

outlay 
Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life 
Showing as little actual comprehension 
Of Christian charity and love and duty. 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last year's almanac : 
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled 

fields. 
And yet so pinched and bare and comfort- 
less, 
The veriest straggler limping on his rounds. 
The sun and air his sole inheritance, 
Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, 
And hugged his rags in self-complacency ! 

Not such should be the homesteads of a 

land 
Where whoso wisely wills and acts may 

dwell 
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state. 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to 

make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time. 
Our yeoman should be equal to his home 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I would 

fain 
In this light way (of which I needs must 

own 
With the knife-grinder of whom Canning 

sings, 
" Stcry, God bless you ! I have none to tell 

you ! ") 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 
The beauty and the joy within their reach, — 
Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes 
Of nature free to all. Haply in years 
That wait to take the places of our own, 
Heard where some breezy balcony looks 

down 



On happy homes, or where the lake in the 

moon 
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as 

Ruth, 
In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet 
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 
May seem the burden of a propliecy, 
Finding its late fulfilment in a change 
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up 
Through broader culture, finer manners, 

love. 
And reverence, to the level of the hills. 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, 
And not of sunset, forward, not beliind, 
Flood the new heavens and earth, and with 

thee bring 
All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
Are pure and honest and of good repute, 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when iii trance and dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
Between the right and wrong ; but give the 

heart 
The freedom of its fair inheritance ; 
Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved 

so long. 
At Nature's table feast his ear and eye 
With joy and wonder ; let all harmonies 
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon 
The princely guest, whether in soft attire 
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of 

toil, 
And, lending life to the dead form of faith, 
Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God ; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of 

prayer. 
The heirship of an unknown destiny. 
The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. 
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things 
Should minister, as outward types and signs 
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 
The one great purpose of creation. Love, 
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven ! 



For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 
And vexed the vales with raining. 

And all the woods were sad with mist, 
And all the brooks complaining. 



S6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



At last, a sudden night-storm tore 

The mountain veils asunder, 
And swept the valleys clean before 

The besom of the thunder. 

Through Sandwich notch the west-wind 
sang 

Good morrow to the cotter ; 
And once again Chocorua's horn 

Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake Ossipee, 
Once more the sunshine wearing, 

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, 
The peaks had winter's keenness ; 

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh greenness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered, 

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 
And sunshine danced and flickered. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

I call to mind those banded vales 

Of shadow and of shining. 
Through which, ray hostess at my side, 

I drove in day's declining. 

We held our sideling way above 
The river's whitening shallows. 

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns 
Swept through and through by swallows ; 

By maple orchards, belts of pine 

And larches climbing darkly 
The mountain slopes, and, over all, 

The great peaks rising starkly. 

You should have seen that long hill-range 
With gaps of brightness riven, — 

How through each pass and hollow streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 
From far celestial fountains, — 

The great sun flaming through the rifts 
Beyond the wall of mountains ! 



We paused at last where home-bound cows 
Brought down the pasture's treasure, 

And in the barn the rhythmic flails 
Beat out a harvest measure. 

We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge, 
The crow his tree-mates calling : 

The shadows lengthening down the slopes 
About our feet were falling. 

And through them smote the level sun 

In broken lines of splendor. 
Touched the gray rocks and made the 
green 

Of the shorn grass more tender. 

The maples bending o'er the gate. 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 

With yellow warmth, the golden glow 
Of coming autumn hinted. 

Keen white between the farm-house showed, 
And smiled on porch and trellis, 

The fair democracy of flowers 
That equals cot and palace. 

And weaving garlands for her dog, 

'Twixt chidings and caresses, 
A human flower of childhood shook 

The sunshine from her tresses. 

On either hand we saw the signs 

Of fancy and of shrewdness. 
Where taste had wound its arms of vines 

Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-brown farmer in his frock 
Sliook hands, and called to Mary : 

Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, 
White-aproned from her dairy. 

Her air, her smile, her motions, told 

Of womanly completeness ; 
A music as of household songs 

Was in her voice of sweetness. 

Not fair alone in curve and line, 
But something more and better. 

The secret charm eluding art. 
Its spirit, not its letter ; — 

An inborn grace that nothing lacked 

Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtesy, 

The calm of self-reliance. 



AMONG THE HILLS 



87 



Before her queenly womanhood 

How dared our hostess utter 
The paltry errand of her need 

To buy her fresh-churned butter ? 

She led the way with housewife pride, 

Her goodly store disclosing, 
Full tenderly the golden balls 

With practised hands disposing. 

Then, while along the western hills 
We watched the changeful glory 

Of sunset, on our homeward way, 
I heard her simple story. 

The early crickets sang ; the stream 
Plashed through my friend's narration : 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in my free translation. 

" More wise," she said, " than those who 
swarm 
Our hills in middle summer, 
She came, when June's first roses blow, 
• To greet the early comer. 

" From school and ball and rout she came. 

The city's fair, pale daughter, 
To drink the wine of mountain air 

Beside the Bearcamp W^ater. 

" Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over ; 

On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 

" For health comes sparkling in the streams 
From cool Chocorua stealing : 

There 's iron in our Northern winds ; 
Our pines are trees of healing. 

" She sat beneath the broad-armed elms 
That skirt the mowing meadow. 

And watched the gentle west-wind weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

" Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 

With forehead bared, the farmer stood, 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

" Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face 
Had nothing mean or common, — 

Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 
And pride beloved of woman. 



" She looked up, glowing with the health 
The country air had brought her. 

And, laughing, said : ' You lack a wife, 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 

" ' To mend your frock and bake your 
bread 

You do not need a lady : 
Be sure among these brown old homes 

Is some one waiting ready, — 

" ' Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand 
And cheerful heart for treasure. 

Who never played with ivory keys, 
Or danced the polka's measure.' 

" He bent his black brows to a frown, 

He set his white teeth tightly. 
* 'T is well,' he said, ' for one like you 

To choose for me so lightly. 

" * You think because my life is rude 

I take no note of sweetness : 
I tell you love has naught to do 

With meetness or unmeetness. 

" * Itself its best excuse, it asks 

No leave of pride or fashion 
When silken zone or homespun frock 

It stirs with throbs of passion. 

" * You think me deaf and blind : you bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 

We two had played together. 

" ' You tempt me with your laughing eyes, 
Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 

A motion as of waving grain, 
A music as of thrushes. 

" ' The plaything of your summer sport. 
The spells 3'ou weave around me 

You cannot at your will undo, 
Nor leave me as you found me. 

" * You go as lightly as you came, 

Your life is well without me ; 
What care you that these hills will close 

Like prison-walls about me ? 

" ' No mood is mine to seek a wife, 

Or daughter for my mother : 
Who loves you loses in that love 

AH power to love another ! 



88 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" ' I dare your pity or your scorn, 
With pride your owu exceeding ; 

I fling my heart into your lap 
Without a word of pleading.' 

" She looked up in his face of pain 

So archly, yet so tender : 
* And if I lend you mine,' she said, 

' Will you forgive the lender ? 

" ' Nor frock nor tan can hide the man ; 

And see you not, my farmer, 
How weak and fond a woman waits 

Behind the silken armor ? 

" * I love you : on that love alone, 
And not my worth, presuming, 

Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? ' 

" Alone the hangbird overhead, 
His hair-swung cradle straining, 

Looked down to see love's miracle, — 
The giving that is gaining. 

" And so the farmer found a wife. 
His mother found a daughter : 

There looks no happier home than hers 
On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 

"Flowers spring to blossom where 
walks 

The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 

" Our homes are cheerier for her sake, 
Our door-yards brighter blooming. 

And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

" Unspoken homilies of peace 

Her daily life is preaching ; 
The still refreshment of the dew 

Is her unconscious teaching. 

" And never tenderer hand than hers 

Unknits the brow of ailing ; 
Her garments to the sick man's ear 

Have music in their trailing. 

" And when, in pleasant harvest moons. 
The youthful buskers gather, 

(^r sleigh-drives on the mountain ways 
Defy the winter weather, — 



" In sugar-camps, when south and warm 
The winds of March are blowing, 

And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 

" In summer, where some lilied pond 

Its virgin zone is baring, 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 

Lights up the apple-paring, — 

" The coarseness of a ruder time 

Her finer mirth displaces, 
A subtler sense of pleasure fills 

Each rustic sport she graces. 

" Her presence lends its warmth and 
health 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such 

As she alone restore it. 

" For larger life and wiser aims 

The farmer is her debtor ; 
Who holds to his another's heart 

Must needs be worse or better. 

" Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition ; 
No double consciousness divides 

The man and politician. 

" In party's doubtful ways he trusts 

Her instincts to determine ; 
At the loud polls, the thought of her 

Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 

" He owns her logic of the heart, 

And wisdom of unreason. 
Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, 

The needed word in season. 

" He sees with pride her richer thought, 

Her fancy's freer ranges ; 
And love thus deepened to respect 

Is proof against all changes. 

" And if she walks at ease in ways 

His feet are slow to travel. 
And if she reads with cultured eyes 

What his may scarce unravel, 

" Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder, 
He learns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under. 



THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL 



" And higher, warmed with summer lights, 


" He sees with eyes of manly trust 


Or winter-crowned and hoary, 


All hearts to her inclining ; 


The ridged horizon lifts for him 


Not less for him his household light 


Its inner veils of glory. 


That others share its shining." 


" He has his own free, bookless lore, 


Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew 


The lessons nature taught him, 


Before me, warmer tinted 


The wisdom which the woods and hills 


And outlined with a tenderer grace, 


And toiling men have brought him : 


The picture that she hinted. 


" The steady force of will whereby 


The smiset smouldered as we drove 


Her flexile grace seems sweeter ; 


Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 


The sturdy counterpoise which makes 


Below us wreaths of white fog walked 


Her woman's life completer ; 


Like ghosts the haunted meadows. 


" A latent fire of soul which lacks 


Sounding the summer night, the stars 


No breath of love to fan it ; 


Dropped down their golden plummets ; 


And wit, that, like his native brooks, 


The pale arc of the Northern lights 


Plays over solid granite. 


Rose o'er the mountain summits, 


" How dwarfed against his manliness 


Until, at last, beneath its bridge, 


She sees the poor pretension, 


We heard the Bearcamp flowing, 


The wants, the aims, the follies, boru 


And saw across the mapled lawn 


Of fashion and convention ! 


The welcome home-lights glowing. 


" How life behind its accidents 


And, musing on the tale I heard, 


Stands strong and self-sustaining, 


'T were well, thought I, if often 


The human fact transcending all 


To rugged farm-life came the gift 


The losing and the gaining. 


To harmonize and soften ; 


" And so in grateful interchange 


If more and more we foimd the troth 


Of teacher and of hearer. 


Of fact and fancy plighted. 


Their lives their true distinctness keep 


And culture's charm and labor's strength 


While daily drawing nearer. 


In rural homes united, — 


" And if the husband or the wife 


The simple life, the homely hearth, 


In home's strong liglit discovers 


With beauty's sphere surrounding, 


Such slight defaults as failed to meet 


And blessing toil where toil abounds 


The blinded eyes of lovers. 


With graces more abounding. 


" Why need we care to ask ? — who 




dreams 


THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL 


Without their thorns of roses. 




Or wonders that the truest steel 


The land was pale with famine 


The readiest spark discloses ? 


And racked with fever-pain ; 




The frozen fiords were fishless. 


" For still in mutual sufferance lies 


The earth withheld her grain. 


The secret of true living ; 




Love scarce is love that never knows 


Men saw the boding Fylgja 


The sweetness of forgiving. 


Before them come and go. 




And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon 


" We send the Squire to General Court, 


From west to east sailed slow ! 


He takes his young wife thither ; 




No prouder man election day 


Jarl Thorkell of Thevera 


Rides through the sweet June weather. 


At Yule-time made his vow ; 



90 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone 
He slew to Frey his cow. 

To bounteous Frey he slew her ; 

To Skuld, the younger Norn, 
Who watches over birth and death, 

He gave her calf unborn. 

And his little gold-haired daughter 

Took up the sprinkling-rod, 
And smeared with blood the temple 

And the wide lips of the god. 

Hoarse below, the winter water 

Ground its ice blocks o'er and o'er ; 

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves. 
Rose and fell along the shore. 

The red torch of the Jokul, 

Aloft in icy space, 
Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones 

And the statue's carven face. 

And closer round and grimmer 

Beneath its baleful light 
Tlie Jotun shapes of mountains 

Came crowding through the night. 

The gray-haired Hersir trembled 
As a flame by wind is blown ; 

A weird power moved his white lips. 
And their voice was not his own ! 

" The ^sir thirst ! " he muttered ; 

" The gods must have more blood 
Before the tun shall blossom 

Or fish shall fill the flood. 

" The ^sir thirst and hunger. 
And hence our blight and ban ; 

The mouths of the strong gods water 
For the flesh and blood of man ! 

" "Whom shall we give the strong ones ? 

Not warriors, sword on thigh ; 
But let the nursling infant 

And bedrid old man die." 

** So be it J " cried the young men, 
" There needs nor doubt nor parle." 

But, knitting hard his red bi-ows, 
In silence stood the Jarl. 

A sound of woman's weeping 
At the temple door was heard, 



But the old men bowed their white heads, 
And answered not a word. 

Then the Dre?.m-wife of Thingvalla, 

A Vala yoimg and fair, 
Sang softly, stirring with her breath 

The veil of her loose hair. 

She sang ; " The winds from Alfheim 

Bring never somid of strife ; 
The gifts for Frey the meetest 

Are not of death, but life. 

" He loves the grass-green meadows. 
The grazing kine's sweet breath ; 

He loathes your bloody Horg-stones, 
Your gifts that smeU of death. 

" No wrong by wrong is righted. 

No pain is cured by pain ; 
The blood that smokes from Doom-rings 

Falls back in redder rain. 

" The gods are what you make them, 
As earth shall Asgard prove ; 

And hate will come of hating, 
And love will come of love. 

" Make dole of skyr and black bread 
That old and young may live ; 

And look to Frey for favor 
When fii'st like Frey you give. 

" Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows 

The summer dawn begins : 
The tun shall have its harvest. 

The fiord its glancing fins." 

Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell : 

" By Gimli and by Hel, 
O Vala of Thingvalla, 

Thou singest wise and well ! 

" Too dear the -^sir's favors 

Bought with our children's lives ; 

Better die than shame in li^^ng 
Our mothers and our wives. 

" The fidl shall give his portion 
To him who hath most need ; 

Of curdled skyr and black bread. 
Be daily dole decreed." 

He broke from off his neck-chain 
Three links of beaten gold ; 



THE TWO RABBINS 



And each man, at liis bidding, 
Brought gifts for young and old. 

Then mothers nursed their children, 
And daughters fed their sires, 

And Health sat down with Plenty 
Before the next Yule fires. 

The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal ; 

The Doom-ring still remains ; 
But the snows of a thousand winters 

Have washed away the stains. 

Christ ruleth now ; the ^sir 
Have found their twilight dim ; 

And, wiser than she dreamed, of old 
The Vala sang of Him ! 



THE TWO RABBINS 

The Rabbi Nathan twoscore years and ten 
Walked blameless through the evil world, 

and then. 
Just as the almond blossomed in his hair. 
Met a temptation all too strong to bear. 
And miserably sinned. So, adding not 
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and 

taught 
No more among the elders, but went out 
From the great congregation girt about 
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head. 
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he 

prayed, 
Smiting his breast ; then, as the Book he 

laid 
Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice. 
Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice, 
Behold the royal preacher's words : " A 

friend 
Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end ; 
And for the evil day thy brother lives." 
Marvelling, he said : " It is the Lord who 

gives 
Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells 
Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels 
In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees 
Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees 
Bow with their weight. I will arise, and 

lay 
My sins before him." 

And he went his way 
Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers ; 
But even as one who, followed unawares, 



Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand 
Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek 

fanned 
By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near 
Of words he loathes, yet camiot choose but 

hear. 
So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low 
The wail of David's penitential woe. 
Before him still the old temptation came, 
And mocked him with the motion and the 

shame 
Of such desires that, shuddering, he ab- 
horred 
Himself ; and, crying mightily to the Lord 
To free his soul and cast the demon out, 
Smote with his staff the blankness round 
about. 

At length, in the low light of a spent day, 
The towers of Ecbatana far away 
Rose on the desert's rim ; and Nathan, faint 
And footsore, pausing where for some dead 

saint 
The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb. 
Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom 
He greeted kindly : " May the Holy One 
Answer thy prayers, O stranger ! " Where- 
upon 
The shape stood up with a loud cry, and 

then. 
Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray 

men 
Wept, praising Him whose gracious provi- 
dence 
Made their paths one. But straightway, as 

the sense 
Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore 
Himself away : " O friend beloved, no 

more 
Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came, 
Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame. 
Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth 

mine. 
May purge my soul, and make it white like 

thine. 
Pity me, O Bent Isaac, I have sinned ! " 

Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert 

wind 
Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare 
The mournful secret of his shirt of hair. 
" I too, O friend, if not in act," he said, 
"In thought have verily sinned. Hast 

thou not read, 
* Better the eye should see than that desire 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Should wander ? ' Burning with a hidden 

fire 
That tears and prayers quench not, I come 

to thee 
For pity and for help, as thou to me. 
Pray for me, O my friend ! " But Nathan 

cried, 
" Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac ! " 

Side by side 
In the low siuishine by the turban stone 
They knelt ; each made liis brother's woe 

liis own, 
Forgetting, in the agony and stress 
Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness ; 
Peace, for his friend besought, his own be- 
came ; 
His prayers were answered in another's 

name ; 
And, when at last they rose up to embrace. 
Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face ! 

Long after, when his headstone gathered 

moss. 
Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos 
In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were 

read : 
•' Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead ; 
Forget it in love's service, and the debt 
Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget ; 
Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone : 
Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own ! " 



NOREMBEGA 

Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name 
given by early French fishermen and explorers 
to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, 
first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was 
Bupposed to have a magnificent city of the 
same name on a great river, probably the Pe- 
nobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid 
down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570. 
In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the 
Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the 
Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed 
the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely 
came to the conclusion that those travellers 
who told of the great city had never seen it. 
He saw no evidences of anything- like civiliza- 
tion, but mentions the finding of a cross, very 
old and mossy, in the woods. 

The winding way the serpent takes 
The mystic water took, 



From where, to count its beaded lakes, 
The forest sped its brook. 

A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore, 

For sun or stars to fall. 
While evermore, behind, before. 

Closed in the forest wall. 

The dim wood hiding underneath 

Wan flowers without a name ; 
Life tangled with decay and death. 

League after league the same. 

Unbroken over swamp and hill 

The rounding shadow lay. 
Save where the river cut at will 

A pathway to the day. 

Beside that track of air and light, 

Weak as a child unweaned, 
At shut of day a Christian knight 

Upon his henchman leaned. 

The embers of the sunset's fires 
Along the clouds burned down ; 

" I see," he said, " the domes and spires 
Of Norembega town." 

" Alack ! the domes, O master mine. 

Are golden clouds on high ; 
Yon spire is but the branchless pine 

That cuts the evening sky." 

"Oh, hush and hark ! What sounds are these 
But chants and holy hymns ? " 

" Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees 
Through all their leafy limbs." 

" Is it a chapel bell that fills 

The air with its low tone ? " 
" Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills, 

The insect's vesper drone." 

" The Christ be praised ! — He sets for me 

A blessed cross in sight ! " 
" Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree 

With two gaunt arms outright ! " 

" Be it wind so sad or tree so stark, 

It mattereth not, my knave ; 
Methinks to funeral hj'^mns I hark, 

The cross is for my grave ! 

" My life is sped ; I shall not see 
My home-set sails again ; 



MIRIAM 



93 



The sweetest eyes of Normandie 
Shall watch for me iii vain. 

" Yet onward still to ear and eye 

The baffling marvel calls ; 
I fain would look before I die 

On Norembega's walls. 

" So, haply, it shall be thy part 

At Christian feet to lay 
The mystery of the desert's heart 

My dead hand plucked away. 

" Leave me an hour of rest ; go thou 
And look from yonder heights ; 

Perchance the valley even now 
Is starred with city lights." 

The henchman climbed the nearest hill, 

He saw nor tower nor town, 
But, through the drear woods, lone and still, 

The river rolling down. 

He heard the stealthy feet of things 
Whose shapes he could not see, 

A flutter as of evil wings. 
The fall of a dead tree. 

The pines stood black against the moon, 

A sword of fire beyond ; 
He heard the wolf howl, and the loon 

Laugh from his reedy pond. 

He turned him back : " O master dear, 

We are but men misled ; 
And thou hast sought a city here 

To find a grave instead." 

" As God shall will ! what matters where 
A true man's cross may stand, 

So Heaven be o'er it here as there 
In pleasant Norman land ? 

" These woods, perchance, no secret hide 

Of lordly tower and hall ; 
Yon river in its wanderings wide 

Has washed no city wall ; 

" Yet mirrored in the sullen stream 

The holy stars are given : 
Is Norembega, then, a dream 

Whose waking is in Heaven ? 

" No builded wonder of these lands 
My weary eyes shall see ; 



A city never made with hands 
Alone awaiteth me — 

" ' Urbs Syon mystica ; ' I see 

Its mansions passing fair, 
* Condita ccelo ; ' let me be. 

Dear Lord, a dweller there ! " 

Above the dying exile hung 

The vision of the bard. 
As faltered on his failing tongue 

The song of good Bernard. 

The henchman dug at dawn a grave 

Beneath the hemlocks brown. 
And to the desert's keeping gave 

The lord of fief and town. 

Years after, when the Sieur Champlain 
Sailed up the unknown stx-eam. 

And Norembega proved again 
A shadow and a dream, 

He found the Norman's nameless grave 

Within the hemlock's shade, 
And, stretching wide its arms to save. 

The sign that God had made. 

The cross-boughed tree that marked the 
spot 

And made it holy ground : 
He needs the earthly city not 

Who hath the heavenly found. 



MIRIAM 

TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 

[When Whittier was an editor in Hartford, 
Mr. Barnard, afterward President of Columbia 
College, was a teacher in the Asylum for the 
Deaf and Dumb in that place. Both men were 
at the time especially interested in Eastern his- 
tory and romance.] 

The years are many since, in youth and 

hope. 
Lender the Charter Oak, our horoscope 
We drew thick-studded with all favoring 

stars. 
Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed 

with scars 
From life's hard battle, meeting once again. 
We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain j 



94 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Knowing, at last, that it is not in man 
Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan 
His permanent house of life. Alike we 

loved 
The muses' haunts, and all our fancies 

moved 
To measures of old song. How since that 

day 
Our feet have parted from the path that 

So fair before us ! Rich, from lifelong 

search 
Of truth, within thy Academic porch 
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact. 
Thy servitors the sciences exact ; 
Still listening with thy hand on Nature's 

keys, 
To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies 
And rhythm of law. I, called from dream 

and song. 
Thank God ! so early to a strife so long. 
That, ere it closed, the black, abundant 

hair 
Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare 
On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime 
Tread with fond feet the path of morning 

time. 
And if perchance too late I linger where 
The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees 

are bare. 
Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely 

blame 
The friend who shields his folly with thy 



One Sabbath day my friend and I, 
After tlie meeting, quietly 
Passed from the crowded village lanes, 
Wliite with dry dust for lack of rains. 
And climbed the neighboring slope, with 

feet 
Slackened and heavy from the heat, 
Although the day was wellnigh done. 
And the low angle of the sun 
Along the naked hillside cast 
Our shadows as of giants vast. 
We reached, at length, the topmost swell, 
Whence, either way, the green turf fell 
In terraces of nature down 
To fruit-hung orchards, and the town 
With white, pretenceless houses, tall 
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all. 
Huge mills whose windows had the look 
Of eager eyes that ill could brook 



The Sabbath rest. We traced the track 
Of the sea-seeking river back, 
Glistening for miles above its mouth. 
Through tlie long valley to the south. 
And, looking eastward, cool to view, 
Stretched the illimitable blue 
Of ocean, from its curved coast-line ; 
Sombred and still the warm sunshine 
Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach 
Of slumberous woods from hill to beach, — 
Slanted on walls of thronged retreats 
From city toil and dusty streets. 
On grassy bluff, and dune of sand. 
And rocky islands miles from land ; 
Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed 
White lines of foam where long waves 

flowed 
Dumb in the distance. In the north. 
Dim through their misty hair, looked forth 
The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea, 
From mystery to mystery ! 

So, sitting on that green hill-slope, 
We talked of human life, its hope 
And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what 
It might have been, and yet was not. 
And, when at last the evening air 
Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer 
Ringing in steeples far below. 
We watched the people churchward go, 
Each to his place, as if thereon 
The true shekinah only shone ; 
And my friend queried how it came 
To pass that they who owned the same 
Great Master still could not agree 
To worship Him in company. 
Then, broadening in his thought, he ran 
Over the whole vast field of man, — 
The varying forms of faith and creed 
That somehow served the holders' need ; 
In which, unquestioned, undenied, 
Uncounted millions lived and died ; 
The bibles of the ancient folk, 
Through which the heart of nations spoke ; 
The old moralities whicli lent 
To home its sweetness and content, 
And rendered possible to bear 
The life of peoples everywhere : 
And asked if we, who boast of light, 
Claim not a too exclusive right 
To truths which must for all be meant, 
Like rain and sunshine freely sent. 
In bondage to the letter still. 
We give it power to cramp and kill, — 
To tax God's fulness with a scheme 



MIRIAM 



95 



Narrower than Peter's house-top dream, 

His wisdom aud his love with plans 

Poor and inadequate as man's. 

It must be that He witnesses 

Somehow to all men that He is : 

That something of His saving grace 

Reaches the lowest of the race, 

Who, through strange creed and rite, may 

draw 
The hints of a diviner law. 
We walk in clearer light ; — but then. 
Is He not God ? — are they not men ? 
Are His responsibilities 
For us alone and not for these ? 

And I made answer : " Truth is one ; 
And, in all lands beneath the sun. 
Whoso hath eyes to see may see 
The tokens of its unity. , 

No scroll of creed its fulness wraps, 
We trace it not by school-boy maps, 
Free as the sun and air it is 
Of latitudes and boundaries. 
In Vedic verse, in dull Kordn, 
Are messages of good to man ; 
The angels to our Aryan sires 
Talked by the earliest household fires ; 
The prophets of the elder day. 
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, 
Read not the riddle all amiss 
Of higher life evolved from this. 

" Nor doth it lessen what He taught, 
Or make the gospel Jesus brought 
Less precious, that His lips retold 
Some portion of that truth of old ; 
Denying not the proven seers. 
The tested wisdom of the years ; 
Confirming with His own impress 
The common law of righteousness. 
We search the world for truth ; we 

cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful. 
From graven stone and written scroll. 
From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
And, weary seekers of the best, 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the Book our mothers read. 
And all our treasure of old thought 
In His harmonious fulness wrought 
Who gathers in one sheaf complete 
The scattered blades of God's sown wheat. 
The common growth that maketh good 
His all-embracing Fatherhood. 



" Wherever through the ages rise 
The altars of self-sacrifice. 
Where love its arms has opened wide, 
Or man for man has calmly died, 
I see the same white wings outspread 
That hovered o'er the Master's head ! 
Up from undated time they come, 
The martyr souls of heathendom. 
And to His cross and passion bring 
Their fellowship of suffering. 
I trace His presence in the blind 
Pathetic gropings of my kind, — 
In prayers from sin and sorrow wrimg, 
In cradle-hymns of life they simg, 
Each, in its measure, but a part 
Of the unmeasured Over-heart ; 
And with a stronger faith confess 
The greater that it owns the less. 
Good cause it is for thankfulness 
That the world-blessing of His life 
With the long past is not at strife ; 
That the great marvel of His death 
To the one order witnesseth. 
No doubt of changeless goodness wakes, 
No link of cause and sequence breaks, 
But, one with nature, rooted is 
In the eternal verities ; 
Whereby, while differing in degree 
As finite from infinity. 
The pain and loss for others borne, 
Love's crown of suffering meekly worn, 
The life man giveth for his friend 
Becomes A'icarious in the end ; 
Their healing place in nature take. 
And make life sweeter for their sake. 

" So welcome I from every source 
The tokens of that primal Force, 
Older than heaven itself, yet new 
As the young heart it reaches to. 
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
The tidal wave of human souls ; 
Guide, comforter, and inward word. 
The eternal spirit of the Lord ! 
Nor fear I aught that science brings 
From searching through material things ; 
Content to let its glasses prove. 
Not by the letter's oldness move. 
The myriad worlds on worlds that course 
The spaces of the universe ; 
Since everywhere the Spirit walks 
The garden of the heart, and talks 
With man, as under Eden's trees, 
In all his varied languages. 
Why mourn above some hopeless flaw 



96 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



In the stone tables of the law, 
When scripture every clay afresh 
Is traced on tablets of the Hesh ? 
By inward sense, by outward signs, 
God's presence still the heart divines ; 
Through deepest joy of Him we learn, 
In sorest grief to Him we turn, 
And reason stoops its pride to share 
The child-like instinct of a prayer." 

And then, as is my wont, I told 
A story of the days of old. 
Not found in printed books, — in sooth, 
A fancy, with slight hint of truth. 
Showing how differing faiths agree 
In one sweet law of charity. 
Meanwhile the sky had golden grown, 
Our faces in its glory shone ; 
But shadows down the valley swept. 
And gray below the ocean slept. 
As time and space I wandered o'er 
To tread the Mogid's marble floor, 
And see a fairer sunset fall 
On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall. 

The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway !) 
Came forth from the Divan at close of day 
Bowed with the burden of his many cares. 
Worn with the hearmg of unnumbered 

prayers, — 
Wild cries for justice, the importimate 
Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate. 
And all the strife of sect and creed and rite, 
Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight : 
For the wise monarch, claiming not to be 
Allah's avenger, left his people free. 
With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified. 
That all the paths of faith, though severed 

wide, 
O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence 

passed, 
Met at the gate of Paradise at last. 

He sought an alcove of his cool hareem. 
Where, far beneath, he heai'd the Jumna's 

stream 
Lapse soft and low along his palace wall, 
And all about the cool sound of the fall 
Of fountains, and of water circling free 
Through marble ducts along the balcony ; 
The voice of women in the distance sweet. 
And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet. 
Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far 

land 
Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand 



The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth 
And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor- 
mouth. 

The date-palms rustled not ; the peepul 
laid 
Its topmost boughs against the balustrade, 
Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines 
That, light and graceful as the shawl- 
designs 
Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone ; 
And the tired monarch, who aside had 

thrown 
The day's hard burden, sat from care apart. 
And let the quiet steal into his heart 
From the still hour. Below him Agra slept 
By the long light of sunset overswept : 
• The river flowing through a level land. 
By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand. 
Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks. 
Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques. 
Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering 

trees 
Relieved against the mournful cypresses ; 
And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea- 
foam. 
The marble wonder of some holy dome 
Hung a wliite moonrise over the still wood. 
Glassing its beauty in a stiUer flood. 

Silent the monarch gazed, until the night 
Swift-falling hid the city from his sight ; 
Then to the woman at his feet he said : 
" Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast 

read 
In childhood of the Master of thy faith. 
Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith : 
' He was a true apostle, yea, a Word 
And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.' 
Thus the Book witnesseth ; and well I know 
By what thou art, O dearest, it is so. 
As the lute's tone the maker's hand be- 
trays. 
The sweet disciple speaks her Master's 
praise." 

Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some 

sort 
She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court 
Tlie sweet traditions of a Christian child ; 
And, through her life of sense, the un- 

defiled 
And chaste ideal of the sinless One 
Gazed on her with an eye .she might not 

shun, — 



MIRIAM 



97 



The sad, reproachful look of pity, born 
Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,) 
Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell 
Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell 
\Vlien the fierce zealots, thii'sting for her 

blood, 
Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood. 
How, when his searching answer pierced 

within 
Each heart, and touched the secret of its sin, 
And her accusers fled his face before. 
He bade the poor one go and sin no more. 
And Akbar said, after a moment's thought, 
" Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught; 
Woe unto him who judges and forgets 
What hidden evil his own heart besets ! 
Something of this large charity I find 
In all the sects that sever humankind ; 
I would to Allah that their lives agreed 
More nearly with the lesson of their creed ! 
Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray 
By wind and water power, and love to say : 
' He who f orgiveth not shall, imf orgiven. 
Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even 
Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex 

my ears 
With the poor hates and jealousies and fears 
Nursed in their human hives. That lean, 

fierce priest 
Of thy own people, (be his heart increased 
By Allah's love !) his black robes smelling 

yet 
Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met 
Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street 
The saying of his prophet true and sweet, — 
' He who is merciful shall mercy meet ! ' " 

But, next day, so it chanced, as night be- 
gan 
To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran 
That one, recalling in her dusky face 
The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race 
Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek 

song, 
Plotting to do her royal master wrong, 
Watching, reproachful of the lingering 

light. 
The evening shadows deepen for her flight. 
Love-guided, to her home in a far land. 
Now waited death at the great Shah's com- 
mand. 

Shapely as that dark princess for whose 
smile 
A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile 



Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes 
The passion and the languor of her skies, 
The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet 
Of her stern lord : " O king, if it be meet. 
And for thy honor's sake," she said, " that I, 
Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should 

die, 
I vnll not tax thy mercy to forgive. 
Easier it is to die than to outlive 
All that life gave me, — him whose wrong 

of thee 
Was but the outcome of his love for me. 
Cherished from childhood, when, beneath 

the shade 
Of templed Axum, side by side we played. 
Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me 
Through weary seasons over land and sea ; 
And two days since, sitting disconsolate 
Within the shadow of the hareem gate. 
Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky, 
Down from the lattice of the balcony 
Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds 

sung 
In the old music of his native tongue. 
He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear, 
Answering in song. 

This night he waited near 
To fly with me. The fault was mine alone : 
He knew thee not, he did but seek his own ; 
Who, in the very shadow of thy throne. 
Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art. 
Greatest and best of men, and in her heart 
Grateful to tears for favor undeserved. 
Turned ever homeward, nor one moment 

swerved 
From her young love. He looked into my 

eyes. 
He heard my voice, and could not otherwise 
Than he hath done ; yet, save one wild em- 
brace 
When first we stood together face to face. 
And all that fate had done since last we met 
Seemed but a dream and left us children 

yet. 

He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed : 
Spare him, O king ! and slay me in his 
stead ! " 

But over Akbar's brows the frown hung 

black. 
And, turning to the eunuch at his back, 
" Take them," he said, " and let the Jumna's 

waves 
Hide both my shame and these accursed 

slaves ! " 



98 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



His loathly length the unsexed bondman 

bowed : 
" On my head be it ! " 

Straightway from a cloud 
Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist 
The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, 

kissed 
Tlie monarch's hand. Loose down her 

shoulders bare 
Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair, 
Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick 

swell 
Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell. 

" Alas ! " she cried, " hast thou forgotten 

quite 
The words of Him we spake of yesternight ? 
Or thy own prophet's, ' Whoso doth endure 
And pardon, of eternal life is sure ' ? 
O great and good ! be thy revenge alone 
Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown ; 
Let thwarted love and youth their pardon 

plead. 
Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed ! " 

One moment the strong frame of Akbar 

shook 
With the great storm of passion. Then his 

look 
Softened to her uplifted face, that still 
Pleaded more strongly than all words, until 
Its pride and anger seemed like overblown. 
Spout clouds of thunder left to tell alone 
Of strife and overcoming. With bowed 

head. 
And smiting on his bosom : " God," he said, 
" Alone is great, and let His holy name 
Be honored, even to His servant's shame ! 
Well spake thy prophet, Miriam, — he alone 
Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone 
At such as these, who here their doom 

await, 
Held like myself in the strong grasp of 

fate. 
They sinned through love, as I through love 

forgive ; 
Take them beyond my realm, but let them 

live ! " 

And, like a chorus to the words of grace. 
The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place, 
Motionless as an idol and as grim. 
In the pavilion Akbar built for him 
Under the court-yard trees, ( for he was 
wise. 



Knew Menu's laws, and through his close- 
shut eyes 
Saw things far off, and as an open book 
Into the thoughts of other men could look,) 
Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse 
The fragment of a holy Vedic verse ; 
And thus it ran : " He who all things for- 
gives 
Conquers himself and all tilings else, and 

lives 
Above the reach of wrong or hate or fear. 
Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear." 

Two leagues from Agra still the traveller 
sees 
The tomb of Akbar through its cypress- 
trees ; 
And, near at hand, the marble walls that 

hide 
The Christian Begum sleeping at his side. 
And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell 
If it be chance alone or miracle ?) 
The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls 
The words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls, — 
Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er, 
And bids the guilty, " Go and sin no more ! " 



It now was dew-fall ; very still 
The night lay on the lonely hill, 
Down which our homeward steps we bent. 
And, silent, through great silence went, 
Save that the tireless crickets played 
Their long, monotonous serenade. 
A yoimg moon, at its narrowest, 
Curved sharp against the darkening west ; 
And, momently, the beacon's star> 
Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar. 
From out the level darkness shot 
One instant and again was not. 
And then my friend spake quietly 
The thought of both : " Yon crescent see! 
Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives 
Hints of the light whereby it lives : 
Somewhat of goodness, something true 
From sun and spirit shining through 
All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark 
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, 
Attests the presence everywhere 
Of love and providential care. 
The faith the old Norse heart confessed 
In one dear name, — the hopefulest 
And tenderest heard from mortal lips 
In pangs of birth or death, from ships 



NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON 



99 



lee-bitten iu the winter sea, 
Or lisped beside a mother's knee, — 
The wiser world hath not outgrown, 
Aud the All-Father is our own ! " 



NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON 

Nauhaught, the Indian deacon, who of old 
Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his nar- 
rowing Cape 
Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds 
And the relentless smiting of the waves. 
Awoke one morning from a pleasant dream 
Of a good angel dropping in his hand 
A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God. 

He rose and went forth with the early day 
Far inland, where the voices of the waves 
Mellowed and mingled with the whispering 

leaves. 
As, through the tangle of the low, thick 

woods, 
He searched his traps. Therein nor beast 

nor bird 
He foimd ; though meanwhile in the reedy 

pools 
The otter plashed, and imderneath the pines 
The partridge drummed : and as his 

thoughts went back 
To the sick wife and little child at home, 
What marvel that the poor man felt his faith 
Too weak to bear its burden, — like a rope 
That, strand by strand imcoiling, breaks 

above 
The hand that grasps it. " Even now, O 

Lord ! 
Send me," he prayed, " the angel of my 

dream ! 
Nauhaught is very poor ; he cannot wait." 

Even as he spake he heard at his bare feet 
A low, metallic clink, and, looking down. 
He saw a dainty purse with disks of gold 
Crowding its silken net. Awhile he held 
The treasure up before his eyes, alone 
With his great need, feeling the wondrous 

coins 
Slide through his eager fingers, one by one. 
So then the dream was true. The angel 

brought 
One broad piece only ; should he take all 

these ? 
Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb 

woods ? 



The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely 

miss 
This dropped crumb from a table always 

full. 
Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear 

the cry 
Of a starved child ; the sick face of his wife 
Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce 

revolt 
Urged the wild license of his savage youth 
Against his later scruples. Bitter toil. 
Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless 

eyes 
To watch his halting, — had he lost for 

these 
The freedom of the woods ; — the hunting- 
grounds 
Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven 
Of everlasting psalms ? One healed the sick 
Very far off thousands of moons ago : 
Had he not prayed him night and day to 

come 
And cure his bed-bound wife ? Was there 

a hell ? 
Were all his fathers' people writhing 

there — 
Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive — 
Forever, djing never ? If he kept 
This gold, so needed, would the dreadful 

God 
Torment him like a Mohawk's captive 

stuck 
With slow-consuming splinters ? Would 

the saints 
And the white angels dance and laugh to 

see him 
Burn like a pitch-pine torch ? His Chris- 
tian garb 
Seemed falling from him ; with the fear 

and shame 
Of Adam naked at the cool of day, 
He gazed around. A black snake lay in coil 
On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye 
Watched from a dead bough. All his In- 
dian lore 
Of evil blending with a convert's faith 
In the supernal terrors of the Book, 
He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake 
And ominous, black-winged bird ; and all 

the while 
The low rebuking of the distant waves 
Stole in upon him like the voice of God 
Among the trees of Eden. Girding up 
His soul's loins with a resoluto hand, he 

thrust 



lOO 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The base thought from him : " Nauhaught, 

be a man ! 
Starve, if need be ; but, while you live, look 

out 
From honest eyes on all men, unashamed. 
God help me ! I am deacon of the church, 
A baptized, praying Indian ! Should I do 
This secret meanness, even the barken 

knots 
Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see 

it, 
The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves 
Whisper above me : ' Nauhaught is a 

thief ! ' 
The sun would know it, and the stars that 

hide 
Behind his light would watch me, and at 

night 
Follow me with their sharp, accusing eyes. 
Yea, thou, God, seest me ! " Then Nau- 
haught drew 
Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus 
The pain of hunger, and walked bravely 

back 
To the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea ; 
And, pausing at the inn - door, cheerily 

asked : 
" Who hath lost aught to-day ? " 

" I," said a voice ; 
" Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse, 
My daughter's handiwork." He looked, 

and lo ! 
One stood before him in a coat of frieze, 
And the glazed hat of a seafaring man, 
Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no 

trace of wings. 
Marvelling, he dropped within the stran- 
ger's hand 
The silken web, and turned to go his way. 
But the man said : " A tithe at least is 

yours ; 
Take it in God's name as an honest man." 
And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed 
Over the golden gift, " Yea, in God's name 
I take it, with a poor man's thanks," he 

said. 
So down the street that, like a river of 

sand, 
Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer sea. 
He sought his home, singing and praising 

God ; 
And when his neighbors in their careless 

way 
Spoke of the owner of the silken purse — 
A Wellfleet skipper, known in every port 



That the Cape opens in its sandy wall — 
He answered, with a wise smile, to him- 
self : 
" I saw the angel where they see a man." 



THE SISTERS 

Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 
Woke in the night to the sound of rain, 

The rush of wind, the ramp and roar • 
Of great waves climbing a rocky shore. 

Annie rose Tip in her bed-gown white, 
And looked out into the storm and night. 

" Hush, and hearken ! " she cried in fear, 
" Hearest thou nothing, sister dear ? " 

" I hear the sea, and the plash of rain, 
And roar of the northeast hurricane. 

" Get thee back to the bed so warm, 
No good comes of watching a storm. 

" What is it to thee, I fain would know. 
That waves are roaring and wild winds 
blow? 

" No lover of thine 's afloat to miss 
The harbor-lights on a night like this." 

" But I heard a voice cry out my name. 
Up from the sea on the wind it came ! 

" Twice and thrice have I heard it call, 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall ! " 

On her pillow the sister tossed her head. 
" Hall of the Heron is safe," she said. 

" In the tautest schooner that ever swam 
He rides at anchor in Annisquam. 

" And, if in peril from swamping sea 
Or lee shore rocks, woiUd he call on thee ? 

But the girl heard only the wind and tide, 
And wringing her small white hands she 
cried : 

" O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong ; 
I hear it again, so loud and long. 



MARGUERITE 



** • Annie ! Annie ! ' I hear it call, 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall ! " 

Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, 
" Thou liest ! He never would call thy 
name ! 

" If he did, I would pray the wind and 

sea 
To keep him forever from thee and me ! " 

Then out of the sea blew a dreadful 

blast ; 
Like the cry of a dying man it passed. 

The young girl hushed on her lips a groan, 
But through her tears a strange light 
shone, — 

The solemn joy of her heart's release 
To own and cherish its love in peace. 

" Dearest ! " she whispered, under breath, 
" Life was a lie, but true is death. 

" The love I hid from myself away 
Shall crown me now in the light of day. 

" My ears shall never to wooer list. 
Never by lover my lips be kissed. 

" Sacred to thee am I henceforth, 
Thou in heaven and I on earth ! " 

She came and stood by her sister's bed : 
" Hall of the Heron is dead ! " she said. 

" The wind and the waves their work have 

done. 
We shall see him no more beneath the 

sun. 

" Little will reck that heart of thine ; 
It loved him not with a love like mine. 

" I, for his sake, were he but here. 
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear, 

" Though hands should tremble and eyes 

be wet. 
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. 

" But now my soul with his soul I wed ; 
Thine the living, and mine the dead ! " 



MARGUERITE 

MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760 

Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian 
peasants forcibly taken from their homes on 
the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were as- 
signed to the several towns of the Massachu- 
setts colony, the children being bound by the 
authorities to service or labor. 

The robins sang in the orchard, the buds 

into blossoms grew ; 
Little of human sorrow the buds and the 

robins knew ! 

Sick, in an alien household, the poor French 

neutral lay ; 
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of 

the April day. 

Through the dusty window, curtained by 
the spider's warp and woof, 

On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on 
oaken ribs of roof. 

The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the tea- 
cups on the stand, 

The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped 
from her sick hand ! 

What to her was the song of the robin, or 
warm morning light, 

As she lay in the trance of the dying, heed- 
less of sound or siglit ? 

Done was the work of her hands, she had 

eaten her bitter bread ; 
The world of the alien people lay behind 

her dim and dead. 

But her soul went back to its child-time ; 

she saw the sun o'erflow 
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over 

Gaspereau ; 

The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of 

the sea at flood, 
Through inlet and creek and river, from 

dike to upland wood ; 

The gulls in the red of morning, the fish- 
hawk's rise and fall. 

The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the 
dark coast-wall. 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



She saw the face of her mother, she heard 

the song she sang ; 
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for 

vespers rang ! 

By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, 
smoothing the wrinkled sheet, 

Peering into the face, so helpless, and feel- 
ing the ice-cold feet. 

With a vague remorse atoning for her greed 

and long abuse, 
By care no longer heeded and pity too late 

for use. 

Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of 

the mistress stepped. 
Leaned over the head-board, covering his 

face with his hands, and wept. 

Outspake the mother, who watched him 
sharply, with brow a-frown : 

" What ! love you the Papist, the beggar, 
the charge of the town ? " 

" Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I 

know and God knows 
I love her, and fain would go with her 

wherever she goes ! 

" O mother ! that sweet face came pleading, 

for love so athirst. 
You saw but the town-charge ; I knew her 

God's angel at first." 

Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed 

down a bitter cry ; 
And awed by the silence and shadow of 

death drawing nigh. 

She mm-mured a psalm of the Bible ; but 
closer the young girl pressed, 

With the last of her life in her fingers, the 
cross to her breast. 

"My son, come away," cried the mother, 

her voice cruel grown. 
" She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim ; 

let her alone ! " 

But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, 

his lips to her ear, 
And he called back the soid that was 

passing : " Marguerite, do you 

hear ? " 



She paused on the threshold of heaven ; 

love, pity, surprise. 
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the 

cloud of her eyes. 

With his heart on his lips he kissed her, 
but never her cheek grew red. 

And the words the living long for he spake 
in the ear of the dead. 

And the robins sang in the orchard, where 

buds to blossoms grew ; 
Of the folded hands and the still face never 

the robins knew ! 



THE ROBIN 

My old Welsh neighbor over the way 
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring, 

Pushed from her ears the locks of gray, 
And listened to hear the robins sing. 

Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped, 
And, cruel in sport as boys will be, 

Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped 
From bough to bough in the apple-tree. 

" Nay ! " said the grandmother ; " have you 
not heard, 

My poor, bad boy ! of the fiery pit. 
And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird 

Carries the water that quenches it ? 

" He brings cool dew in his little bill, 
And lets it fall on the souls of sin : 

You can see the mark on his red breast still 
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in. 

" My poor Bron rhuddyn ! my breast- 
burned bird, 

Singing so sweetly from limb to limb, 
Very dear to the heart of Our Lord 

Is he who pities the lost like Him ! " 

" Amen ! " I said to the beautiful myth ; 

" Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well : 
Each good thought is a drop wherewith 

To cool and lessen the fires of hell. 

" Prayers of love like rain-drops fall, 

Tears of pity are cooling dew. 
And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all 

Who suffer like Him in the good they 
do!" 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



103 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 

[For the preface which introduced this poem 
when first published, see the notes at the end 
of this volume. The verses which precede the 
prelude are from the Latin of Fkancis Daniel 
Pastorius in the Germantown Records, 1688.] 

Hail to posterity ! 
Hail, future men of GemianopoHs ! 

Let the young generations yet to be 
Look kindly upon this. 
Think how your fathers left their native 
land, — 
Dear German-land ! O sacred hearths 

and homes ! — 
And, where the wild beast roams, 
In patience planned 
New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea, 

There undisturbed and free 
To live as brothers of one family. 
What pains and cares befell, 
What trials and what fears, 
Remember, and wherein we have done well 
Follow our footsteps, men of coming 
years ! 
Where we have failed to do 
Aright, or wisely live, 
Be warned by us, the better way pursue. 
And, knowing we were human, even as you. 
Pity us and forgive ! 
Farewell, Posterity ! 
Farewell, dear Germany! 
Forevermore farewell ! 

PRELUDE 

I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime 

And milder speech than those brave men's 
who brought 
To the ice and iron of our winter time 
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and 

wrought 
With one mailed hand, and with the other 
fought. 
Simply, as tits my theme, in homely rhyme 
I sing the blue-eyed German Spener 
taught. 
Through whose veiled, mystic faith the In- 
ward Light, 
Steady and still, an easy brightness, 
shone, 
Transfiguring all things in its radiance 
white. 



The garland which his meekness never 
sought 
I bring him ; over fields of harvest sown 
With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness 
grown, 
I bid the sower pass before the reapers' 
sight. 



Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day 
From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away, 
Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets 
lay 

Along the wedded rivers. One long bar 
Of purple cloud, on which the evening 

star 
Shone like a jewel on a scimitar, 

Held the sky's golden gateway. Through 

the deep 
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to 

creep. 
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of 



All else was stiU. The oxen from their 
ploughs 

Rested at last, and from their long day's 
browse 

Came the dun files of Krisheim's home- 
bound cows. 

And the young city, round whose virgin 

zone 
The rivers like two mighty arms were 

thrown. 
Marked by the smoke of evening fires 

alone. 

Lay in the distance, lovely even then 
With its fair women and its stately men 
Gracing the forest court of William Penn, 

Urban yet sylvan ; in its rough - hewn 

frames 
Of oak and pine the dryads held their 

claims. 
And lent its streets their pleasant woodland 

names. 

Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane 
Looked city-\vard, then stooped to prune 

again 
Her vines and simples, with a sigh of pain. 



[04 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paled 
In the oak clearing, and, as daylight failed, 
Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds 
sailed. 

Agam she looked : between green walls of 

shade, 
With low -bent head as if with sorrow 

weighed, 
Daniel Pastorius slowly came and said, 

" God's peace be with thee, Anna ! " Then 

he stood 
Silent before her, wrestling with the mood 
Of one who sees the evil and not good. 

" What is it, my Pastorius ? " As she spoke, 
A slow, faint smile across his features broke. 
Sadder than tears. " Dear heart," he said, 
" our folk 

"Are even as others. Yea, our goodliest 

Friends 
Are frail ; our elders have their selfish ends. 
And few dare trust the Lord to make 

amends 

" For duty's loss. So even our feeble word 
For the dumb slaves the startled meeting 

heard 
As if a stone its quiet waters stirred ; 

" And, as the clerk ceased reading, there 

began 
A ripple of dissent which downward ran 
In widening circles, as from man to man. 

" Somewhat was said of running before 
sent, 

Of tender fear that some their guide out- 
went, 

Troublers of Israel. I was scarce intent 

" On hearing, for behind the reverend row 
Of gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous 

show, 
I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe. 

" And, in the spirit, I was taken where 
They toiled and suffered ; I was made aware 
Of shame and wrath and anguish and de- 
spair ! 

"And while the meeting smothered our 
poor plea 



With cautious phrase, a Voice there seemed 

to be, 
* As ye have done to these ye do to me ! * 

" So it all passed ; and the old tithe went on 
Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun 
Set, leaving still the weightier work un- 
done. 

" Help, for the good man faileth ! Who is 

strong, 
If these be weak ? Who shall rebuke the 

wrong. 
If these consent ? How long, O Lord ! 

how long ! " 

He ceased ; and, bound in spirit with the 

bound, 
With folded arms, and eyes that sought the 

ground, 
Walked musingly his little garden round. 

About him, beaded with the falling dew, 
Rare plants of power and herbs of healing 

grew. 
Such as Van Helmont and Agrippa knew. 

For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage, 
With the mild mystics of his dreamy age 
He read the herbal signs of nature's page, 

As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's 

bowerS 
Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours. 
The pious Spener read his creed in flowers. 

" The dear Lord give us patience ! " said 

his wife. 
Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife 
With leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec 

knife 

Or Carib spear, a gift to William Penu 
From the rare gardens of Jolin Evelyn, 
Brought from the Spanish Main by meiv 
chantmen. 

" See this strange plant its steady purpose 

hold. 
And, year by year, its patient leaves unfold. 
Till tlae young eyes that watched it first are 

old. 

" But some time, thou hast told me, there 
shall come 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



^05 



A sudden beauty, brightness, and perfume ; 
The century-moulded bud shall burst in 
bloom. 

"So may the seed which hath been sown 

to-day 
Grow with the years, and, after long delay, 
Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea 

" Answer at last the patient prayers of them 
Who now, by faith alone, behold its stem 
Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's 
diadem. 

" Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work and 

wait, 
Remains for us. The wrong indeed is 

great, 
But love and patience conquer soon or late." 

" Well hast thou said, my Anna ! " Ten- 
derer 
Than youth's caress upon the head of her 
Pastorius laid his hand. " Shall we demur 

" Because the vision tarrieth ? In an hour 
We dream not of, the slow-grown bud may 

flower. 
And what was sown in weakness rise in 

power ! " 

Then through the vine-draped door whose 

legend read, 
" Procul este profani ! " Anna led 
To where their child upon his little bed 

Looked up and smiled. " Dear heart," she 

said, " if we 
Must bearers of a heavy burden be, 
Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see 

" When from the gallery to the farthest seat. 
Slave and slave-owner shall no longer meet, 
But all sit equal at the Master's feet." 

On the stone hearth the blazing walnut block 
Set the low walls a-glimmer, showed the 

cock 
Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock, 

Shone on old tomes of law and physic, side 
By side with Fox and Behmen, played at 

hide 
And seek with Anna, midst her household 

pride 



Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare 
Of costly cloth or silver cup, but where, 
Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware, 

The courtly Penn had praised the good- 
wife's cheer. 

And quoted Horace o'er her home-brewed 
beer, 

Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear. 

In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's 

wave. 
He dwelt in peace with God and man, and 

gave 
Food to the poor and shelter to the slave. 

For all too soon the New World's scandal 

shamed 
The righteous code by Penn and Sidney 

framed. 
And men withheld the human rights they 

claimed. 

And slowly wealth and station sanction lent. 
And hardened avarice, on its gains intent, 
Stifled the inward whisper of dissent. 

Yet all the while the burden rested sore 
On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore 
Their warning message to the Church's 
door 

In God's name ; and the leaven of the word 
Wrought ever after in the souls who heard, 
And a dead conscience in its grave-clothes 
stirred 

To troubled life, and urged the vain excuse 
Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use, 
Good in itself if evil in abuse. 

Gravely Pastorius listened, not the less 
Discerning through the decent fig-leaf dress 
Of the poor plea its shame of selfishness. 

One Scripture rule, at least, was unforgot j 
He hid the outcast, and bewrayed him not ; 
And, when his prey the human hunter 
sought, 

He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delay 
And proffered cheer prolonged the master's 

stay, 
To speed the black guest safely on his 

way. 



io6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Yet who shall guess his bitter grief who 

lends 
His life to some great cause, and finds his 

friends 
Shame or betray it for their private ends ? 

How felt the Master when his chosen strove 
In childish folly for their seats above ; 
And that fond mother, blinded by her love. 

Besought him that her sons, beside his 

throne, 
Might sit on either hand ? Amidst his own 
A stranger oft, conipanionless and lone, 

God's priest and prophet stands. The 

martyr's pain 
Is not alone from scourge and cell and 

chain ; 
Sharper the pang when, shouting in his 

train, 

His weak disciples by their lives deny 
The loud hosannas of their daily cry, 
And make their echo of his truth a lie. 

His forest home no hermit's cell he found, 
Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth 

around. 
And held armed truce upon its neutral 

ground. 

There Indian chiefs with battle-bows un- 
strung, 

Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Ho- 
mer sung, 

Pastorius fancied, when the world was 
young, 

Came with their tawny women, lithe and 

tall. 
Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's 

hall, 
Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all. 

There hungry folk in homespun drab and 

gray 
Drew round his board on Monthly Meeting 

day. 
Genial, half merry in their friendly way. 

Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland, 
Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understand 
The New World's promise, sought his help- 
ing hand. 



Or painful Kelpius from his hermit den 
By Wissahickon, maddest of good men. 
Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Peter- 



Deep in the woods, where the small river 

slid 
Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic 

hid. 
Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid, 

Reading the books of Daniel and of John, 
And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through 

the Stone 
Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone. 

Whereby he read what man ne'er read be- 
fore. 
And saw the visions man shall see no more, 
Till the great angel, striding sea and shore, 

Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships, 
The warning trump of the Apocalypse, 
Shattering the heavens before the dread 
eclipse. 

Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin 
Leaned o'er the gate ; or Ranter, pure 

within. 
Aired his perfection in a world of sin. 

Or, talking of old home scenes. Op der 

Graaf 
Teased the low back-log with his shodden 

staff. 
Till the red embers broke into a laugh 

And dance of flame, as if they fain would 

cheer 
The rugged face, half tender, half austere, 
Touched with the pathos of a homesick 

tear ! 

Or Sluyter, saintly familist, whose word 
As law the Brethren of the Manor heard, 
Announced the speedy terrors of the Lord, 

And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from his 

race. 
Above a wrecked world with complacent 

face 
Riding secure upon his plank of grace ! 

Haply, from Finland's birchen groves ex« 
iled. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



107 



Manly in thought, in simple ways a child, 
His wliite hair floating round his visage 
mild, 

The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's 

door, 
Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear 

once more 
His long-disused and half-forgotten lore. 

For both could baffle Babel's lingual curse. 
And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse 
Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding verse. 

And oft Pastorius and the meek old man 
Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran, 
Ending in Christian love, as they began. 

With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he 

strayed 
Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade 
Looked miles away, by every flower de- 
layed. 

Or song of bird, happy and free with one 
Who loved, like him, to let his memory run 
Over old fields of learning, and to sun 

Himself in Plato's wise philosophies, 
And dream with Philo over mysteries 
Whereof the dreamer never finds the keys ; 

To touch all themes of thought, nor weakly 

stop 
For doubt of truth, but let the buckets drop 
Deep down and bring the hidden waters 

up. 

For there was freedom in that wakening 

time 
Of tender soids ; to differ was not crime ; 
The varying bells made up the perfect 
chime. 

On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal. 
The white, clear light, tradition-colored, 

stole 
Through the stained oriel of each human 

soul. 

Gathered from many sects, the Quaker 

brought 
His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought 
That moved his soul the creed his fathers 

taught. 



One faith alone, so broad that all mankind 
Within themselves its secret witness find, 
The soul's communion with the Eternal 
Mind, 

The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and 

Guide, 
Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, 
The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. 

As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting, 

face 
By face in Flemish detail, we may trace 
How loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral 

grace 

Sat in close contrast, — the clipt-headed 

churl, 
Broad market-dame, and simple serving- 

.girl 
By skirt of silk and periwig in curl ! 

For soul touched soul ; the spiritual treas- 
ure-trove 
Made all men equal, none could rise above 
Nor sink below that level of God's love. 

So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, 
The homespun frock beside the scholar's 

gown, 
Pastorius to the manners of the town 

Added the freedom of the woods, and 

sought 
The bookless wisdom by experience taught, 
And learned to love his new-found home, 

while not 

Forgetful of the old ; the seasons went 
Their roimds, and somewhat to his spirit 

lent 
Of their own calm and measureless content. 

Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing 
His song of welcome to the Western sprmg. 
And bluebird borrowing from the sky his 
wing. 

And when the miracle of autumn came, 
And all the woods with many-colored flame 
Of splendor, making summer's greenness 
tame, 

Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a 
sound 



io8 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Spake to him from each kindled bush 

around, 
And made the strange, new landscape holy 

ground ! 

And when the bitter north-wind, keen and 
swift, 

Swept the white street and piled the door- 
yard drift, 

He exercised, as Friends might say, his gift 

Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like the 

hash 
Of corn and beans in Indian succotash ; 
Dull, doubtless, but with here and there a 



Of wit and fine conceit, — the good man's 

Of quiet fancies, meet to while away 
The slow hours measuring off an idle day. 

At evening, while his wife put on her look 
Of love's endurance, from its niche he 

took 
The written pages of his ponderous book. 

And read, in half the languages of man. 
His " Rusca Apium," which with bees be- 
gan. 
And through the gamut of creation ran. 

Or, now and then, the missive of some friend 
In gray Altorf or storied Niiruberg penned 
Dropped in upon him like a guest to spend 

The night beneath his roof-tree. Mystical 
The fair Von Merlau spake as waters fall 
And voices sound in dreams, and yet withal 

Human and sweet, as if each far, low tone. 
Over the roses of her gardens blown 
Brought the warm sense of beauty all her 



Wise Spener questioned what his friend 

could trace 
Of spiritual influx or of saving grace 
In the wild natures of the Indian race. 

And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, to 
look 

From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Penta- 
teuch, 

Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook, 



To query with him of climatic change, 
Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range. 
Of flowers and fruits and simples new and 
strange. 

And thus the Old and New World reached 

their hands 
Across the water, and the friendly lands 
Talked with each other from their severed 

strands. 

Pastorius answered all : while seed and root 
Sent from his new home grew to flower and 

fruit 
Along the Rhine and at the Spessart's foot ; 

And, in return, the flowers his boyhood knew 
Smiled at his door, the same in form and 

hue. 
And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew. 

No idler he ; whoever else might shirk. 
He set his hand to every honest woi-k, — 
Farmer and teacher, court and meeting 
clerk. 

Still on the town seal his device is found. 
Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a trefoil 

ground. 
With " Vinum, Linum et Textrinum " 

wound. 

One house sufficed for gospel and for law, 
Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text and 

saw, 
Assured the good, and held the rest in awe. 

Whatever legal maze he wandered through, 
He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view, 
And justice always into mercy grew. 

No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor 

jail. 
Nor ducking-stool ; the orchard-thief grew 

pale 
At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail. 

The usurer's grasp released the forfeit land ; 
The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand. 
And all men took his counsel for command. 

Was it caressing air, the brooding love 
Of tenderer skies than German land knew 

of, 
Green calm below, blue quietness above, 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



109 



Still flow of water, deep repose of wood 
That, with a sense of loving Fatherhood 
And childlike trust in the Eternal Good, 

Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge of 

hate, 
Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal to 

wait 
The slow assurance of the better state ? 

Who knows what goadings in their sterner 

way 
O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray. 
Blew round the men of Massachusetts Bay ? 

What hate of heresy the east-wind woke ? 
What hints of pitiless power and terror 

spoke 
In waves that on their iron coast-line broke ? 

Be it as it mny : within the Land of ^enn 

The sectary yielded to the citizen. 

And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded men. 

Peace brooded over all. No trumpet stung 
The air to madness, and no steeple flung 
Alarums down from bells at midnight rimg. 

The land slept well. The Indian from his 

face 
Washed all his war-paint off, and in the 

place 
Of battle-marches sped the peaceful chase. 

Or wrought for wages at the white man's 

side, — 
Giving to kindness what his native pride 
And lazy freedom to all else denied. 

And well the curious scholar loved the 

old 
Traditions that his swarthy neighbors 

told 
By wigwam-fiires when nights were growing 

cold. 

Discerned the fact round which their fancy 

drew 
Its dreams, and held their childish faith 

more true 
To God and man than half the creeds he 

knew. 

The desert blossomed round him ; wheat- 
fields rolled 



Beneath the warm wind waves of green 

and gold ; 
The planted ear returned its hundred-fold. 

Great clusters ripened in a warmer sun 
Than that which by the Rliine stream shines 

upon 
The purpling hillsides with low vines o'er- 

run. 

About each rustic porch the humming-bird 
Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal 

stirred. 
The Old World flowers to virgin soil trans- 
ferred ; 

And the first-fruits of pear and apple, 
bending 

The young boughs down, their gold and 
russet blending. 

Made glad his heart, familiar odors lend- 
ing 

To the fresh fragrance of the birch and 

pine, 
Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine, 
And all the subtle scents the woods combine. 

Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in sum- 
mer calm. 

Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland 
balm, 

Came to him, like some mother-hallowed 
psalm 

To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel 
Of labor, winding off from memory's reel 
A golden thread of music. With no peal 

Of bells to call them to the house of 
praise. 

The scattered settlers through green forest- 
ways 

Walked meeting-ward. In reverent amaze 

The Indian trapper saw them, from the 

dim 
Shade of the alders on the rivulet's rim. 
Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk with 

Him. 

There, through the gathered stillness mul- 
tiplied 
And made intense by sympathy, outside 
The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin cried, 



no 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



A-swing upon his elm. A faint perfume 
Breathed through the open windows of the 

room 
From locust-trees, heavy with clustered 

bloom. 

Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors 

came, 
Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame. 
Proud of the cropped ears meant to be their 

shame, 

Men who had eaten slavery's bitter bread 
In Indian isles ; pale women who had bled 
Under the hangman's lash, and bravely 
said 

God's message through their prison's iron 

bars ; 
And gray old soldier-converts, seamed with 

scars 
From every stricken field of England's wars. 

Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt 
Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt 
On his moved lips the seal of silence melt. 

Or, without spoken words, low breathings 

stole 
Of a diviner life from soul to soul, 
Baptizing in one tender thought the whole. 

When shaken hands announced the meeting 

o'er. 
The friendly group still lingered at the door. 
Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store 

Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth and 
maid 

Down the green vistas of the woodland 
strayed, 

Whispered and smiled and oft their feet de- 
layed. 

Did the boy's whistle answer back the 

thrushes ? 
Did light girl lavighter ripple through the 

bushes, 
As brooks make merry over roots and 

rushes ? 

Unvexed the sweet air seemed. Without a 

wound 
The ear of silence heard, and every sound 
Its place in nature's fine accordance found. 



And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood, 
Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood 
Seemed, like God's new creation, very good 1 

And, greeting all with quiet smile and word, 
Pastorius went his way. The unscared bird 
Sang at his side ; scarcely the squirrel 
stii-red 

At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod ; 
And, wheresoe'er the good man looked or 

trod, 
He felt the peace of nature and of God. 

His social life wore no ascetic form. 

He loved all beauty, without fear of harm, 

And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm. 

Strict to himself, of other men no spy, 
He made his own no circuit-judge to try 
The freer conscience of his neighbors by. 

With love rebuking, by his life alone. 
Gracious and sweet, the better way was 

shown. 
The joy of one, who, seeking not his own, 

And faithful to all scruples, finds at last 
The thorns and shards of duty overpast. 
And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast, 

Pleasant and beautiful with sight and sound 
And flowers upspringing in its narrow 

round. 
And all his days with quiet gladness 

crowned. 

He sang not ; but if sometimes tempted 

strong. 
He hummed what seemed like Altorf's 

Burschen-song, 
His good wife smiled and did not count it 

wrong. 

For well he loved his boyhood's brother 

band ; 
His Memory, while he trod the New World's 

strand, 
A double-ganger walked the Fatherland ! 

If, when on frosty Christmas eves the light 
Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed the 

sight 
Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all itt 

white : 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



And closed his eyes, and listened to the 

sweet 
Old wait-songs sounding down his native 

street, 
And watched again the dancers' mingling 

feet; 

Yet not the less, when once the vision passed. 
He held the plain and sober maxims fast 
Of the dear Friends with whom his lot was 
cast. 

Still all attuned to nature's melodies 

He loved the bird's song in his door-yard 

trees. 
And the low hum of home-returning bees ; 

The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in bloom 
Down the long street, the beauty and per- 
fume 
Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and 
gloom 

Of Soramerhausen's woodlands, woven 
through 

With sun-threads ; and the music the wind 
drew. 

Mournful and sweet, from leaves it over- 
blew. 

And evermore, beneath this outward sense, 
And through the common sequence of 

events. 
He felt the guiding hand of Providence 

Reach out of space. A Voice spake in his 

ear. 
And lo ! all other voices far and near 
Died at that whisper, full of meanings clear. 

The Light of Life shone roimd him ; one by 

one 
The wandering lights, that all-misleading 

run. 
Went out like candles paling in the sun. 

That Light he followed, step by step, 

where'er 
It led, as in the vision of the seer 
The wheels moved as the spirit in the clear 

And terrible crystal moved, with all their 

eyes 
Watching the living splendor sink or rise. 
Its wUl their will, knowing no otherwise. 



Within himself he fomid the law of right. 
He walked by faith and not the letter's 

sight, 
And read his Bible by the Inward Light. 

And if sometimes the slaves of form and 

ride, 
Frozen in their creeds like fish in winter's 

pool, 
Tried the large tolerance of his liberal 

school. 

His door was free to men of every name. 
He welcomed all the seeking souls who 

came, 
And no man's faith he made a cause of 

blame. 

But best he loved in leisure hours to see 
His own dear Friends sit by him knee to 

knee. 
In social converse, genial, frank, and free. 

There sometimes silence (it were hard to 

tell 
Who owned it first) upon the circle fell, 
Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its spell 

On the black boy who grimaced by the 

hearth, 
To solemnize his shining face of mirth ; 
Only the old clock ticked amidst the dearth 

Of sound ; nor eye was raised nor hand 

was stirred 
In that soul-sabbath, till at last some word 
Of tender counsel or low prayer was heard. 

Then guests, who lingered but farewell to 
say 

And take love's message, went their home- 
ward way ; 

So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's 
day. 

His was the Christian's unsung Age of 

Gold, 
A truer idyl than the bards have told 
Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. 

Where still the Friends their place of 

burial keep. 
And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep. 
The Nurnberg scholar and his helpmeet 

sleep. 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And Anna's aloe ? If it flowered at last 
In Bartram's garden, did John Woolnian 

cast 
A glance upon it as he meekly passed ? 

And did a secret sympathy possess 
That tender soul, and for the slave's redress 
Lend hope, strength, patience ? It were 
vain to guess. 

Nay, were the plant itself but mythical. 
Set in the fresco of tradition's wall 
Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not at 
all. 

Enough to know that, through tne winter's 

frost 
And summer's heat, no seed of truth is lost, 
And every duty pays at last its cost. 

For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air, 
God sent the answer to his life-long prayer ; 
The child was born beside the Delaware, 

Who, in the power a holy purpose lends, 
Guided his people unto nobler ends. 
And left them worthier of the name of 
Friends. 

And lo ! the fulness of the time has come. 
And over all the exile's Western home, 
From sea to sea the flowers of freedom 
bloom ! 

And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets 

blow ; 
But not for thee, Pastorius ! Even so 
The world forgets, but the wise angels 

know. 



KING VOLMER AND ELSIE 

AFTER THE DANISH OF CHRISTIAN 
WINTER 

[A Danish gentleman, Mr. P. Taft, sent the 
poet an unrhymed outline in English of Win- 
ter's ballad.] 

Where, over heathen doom-rings and gray 

stones of the Horg, 
In its little Christian city stands the church 

of Vordingborg, 



In merry mood King Volmer sat, forgetful 

of his power. 
As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded 

on his tower. 

Out spake the King to Henrik, his young 

and faithful squire : 
" Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of 

thy desire ? " 
" Of all the men in Denmark she loveth 

only me : 
As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to 

thee." 

Loud laughed the king : " To-morrow shall 

bring another day. 
When I myself will test her ; she will not 

say me nay." 
Thereat the lords and gallants, that round 

about him stood. 
Wagged all their heads in concert and 

smiled as courtiers should. 

The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and 

on the ancient town 
From the tall tower of Valdemar the 

Golden Goose looks down ; 
The yellow grain is waving in thfe pleasant 

wind of morn. 
The wood resounds with cry of hounds and 

blare of hunter's horn. 

In the garden of her father little Elsie sits 

and spins, 
And, singing with the early birds, her daily 

task begins. 
Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls 

around her garden-bower, 
But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer 

than the flower. 

About her form her kirtle blue clings lov- 
ingly, and, white 

As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her 
small, round wrists in sight ; 

Below, the modest petticoat can only half 
conceal 

The motion of the lightest foot that ever 
turned a wheel. 

The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum 

in sunshine warm ; 
But, look ! she starts, she lifts her face, 

she shades it with her arm. 



KING VOLMER AND ELSIE 



And, hark ! a train of horsemen, with sound 
of dog and horn, 

Come leaping o'er the ditches, come tramp- 
ling down the corn ! 

Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and 

plume streamed gay, 
As fast beside her father's gate the riders 

held their way ; 
And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with 

golden spur on heel, 
And, as he checked his foaming steed, the 

maiden checked her wheel. 

" All hail among thy roses,, the fairest rose 

to me ! 
For weary months in secret my heart has 

longed for thee ! " 
What noble knight was this ? What words 

for modest maiden's ear ? 
She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashful- 

ness and fear. 

She lifted up her spinning-wheel ; she fain 

would seek the door, 
Trembling in every limb, her cheek with 

blushes crimsoned o'er. 
" Nay, fear me not," the rider said, " I 

offer heart and hand, 
Bear witness these good Danish knights 

who round about me stand. 

" I grant you time to think of this, to an- 
swer as you may. 

For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring 
another day." 

He spake the old phrase slyly, as glancing 
round his train, 

He saw his merry followers seek to hide 
their smiles in vain. 

" The snow of pearls I '11 scatter in your 

curls of golden hair, 
I '11 line with furs the velvet of the kirtle 

that you wear ; 
All precious gems shall twine your neck ; 

and in a chariot gay 
You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four 

steeds of gray. 

" And harps shall sound, and flutes shall 
play, and brazen lamps shall glow ; 

On marble floors your feet shall weave the 
dances to and fro. 



At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth 

shall shine, 
While at our ease we play at draughts, and 

drink the blood-red wine." 

Then Elsie raised her head and met her 

wooer face to face ; 
A roguish smile shone in her eye and on 

her lip found place. 
Back from her low white forehead the 

curls of gold she threw. 
And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and 

clear and blue. 

" I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant 

knight ; 
I will not trust a love that soon may cool 

and turn to slight. 
If you would wed me henceforth be a 

peasant, not a lord ; 
I bid you hang upon the wall your tried 

and trusty sword." 

" To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dy- 

nadel away. 
And in its place will svdng the scythe and 

mow your father's hay." 
" Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my 

eyes can never bear ; 
A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all 

that you must wear." 

'• Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," the 

rider gayly spoke, 
" And on the Lord's high altar I '11 lay my 

scarlet cloak." 
" But mark," she said, " no stately horse 

my peasant love must ride, 
A yoke of steers before the plough is all 

that he must guide." 

The knight looked down upon his steed : 

" Well, let him wander free : 
No other man must ride the horse that has 

been backed by me. 
Henceforth I '11 tread the furrow and to 

my oxen talk, 
If only little Elsie beside my plough will 

walk." 

" You must take from out your cellar cask 
of wine and flask and can ; 

The homely mead I brew you may serve % 
peasant-man." 



114 NARRATIVE AND 


LEGENDARY POEMS 


" Most willingly, fair Elsie, I '11 drink that 


None saw the fond embracing, save, shin- 


mead of thine. 


ing from afar, 


And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to 


The Golden Goose that watched f.hp". f-^rv. 


drain my generous wine." 


the tow< 


"Now break your shield asunder, and 


darling gir 


shatter sign and boss. 


flowers 


Unmeet for peasant - wedded arms, your 


Her vales of ; 


knightly knee across. 


you ni) o^.-fe. 


And pull me down your castle from top to 


No praise as yours so bravely rewards the 


basement wall. 


singer's skill ; 


And let your plough trace furrows in the 


Thank God ! of maids like Elsie the land 


ruins of your hall ! " 


has plenty still ! 


Then smiled he with a lofty pride ; right 


• 


well at last he knew 


THE THREE BELLS 


The maiden of the spinning-wheel was to 




her troth-plight true. 


Beneath the low-hung night cloud 


" Ah, roguish little Elsie ! you act your part 


That raked her splintering mast 


full well : 


The good ship settled slowly, 


You know that I must bear my shield and 


The cruel leak gained fast. 


in my castle dwell ! 






Over the awful ocean 


" The lions ramping on that shield between 


Her signal guns pealed out. 


the hearts alame 


Dear God ! was that Thy answer 


Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and 


From the horror round about ? 


guard her ancient name. 




For know that I am Volmer ; I dwell in 


A voice came down the wild wind, 


yonder towers. 


" Ho ! ship ahoy ! " its cry : 


Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, 


" Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow 


this goodly home of ours ! 


Shall lay till daylight by ! " 


" I tempt no more, fair Elsie ! your heart 


Hour after hour crept slowly, 


I know is true ; 


Yet on the heaving swells 


Would God that all our maidens were good 


Tossed up and down the ship-lights, 


and pure as you ! 


The lights of the Three Bells ! 


Well have you pleased your monarch, and 




he shall well repay ; 


And ship to ship made signals, 


God's peace ! Farewell ! To-morrow will 


Man answered back to man, 


bring another day ! " 


While oft, to cheer and hearten, 




The Three Bells nearer ran ; 


He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his 




good steed then. 


And the captain from her taffrail 


And like a whirl-blast swept away with all 


Sent down his hopeful cry : 


his gallant men. 


" Take heart ! Hold on ! " he shouted ! 


The steel hoofs beat the rocky path ; again 


" The Three Bells shall lay by 1 " 


on winds of morn 




The wood resounds with cry of hounds and 


All night across the waters 


blare of hunter's horn. 


The tossing lights shone clear ; 




All night from reeling taffrail 


" Thou true and ever faithful ! " the listen- 


The Three Bells sent her cheer. 


ing Henrik cried ; 




And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood 


And when the dreary watches 


by Elsie's side. 


Of storm and darkness passed, 



JOHN UNDERHILL 



Just as the wreck lurched under, 
All souls were saved at last. 

Sail on, Three Bells, forever, 
In grateful memory sail ! 

Ring on. Three Bells of rescue, 
Above the wave and gale ! 

Type of the Love eternal. 
Repeat the Master's cry. 

As tossing through our darkness 
The lights of God draw nigh ! 



JOHN UNDERHILL 

A SCORE of years had come and gone 
Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth 

stone, 
When Captain Underhill, bearing scars 
From Indian ambush and Flemish wars. 
Left three -hilled Boston and wandered 

down, 
East by north, to Cocheco town. 

With Vane the younger, in council sweet. 
He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet, 
And, when the bolt of banishment fell 
On the head of his saintly oracle, 
He had shared her ill as her good report, 
And braved the wrath of the General 
Court. 

He shook from his feet as he rode away 

The dust of the Massachusetts Bay. 

The world might bless and the world might 

ban, 
What did it matter the perfect man- 
To whom the freedom of earth was given. 
Proof against sin, and sure of heaven ? 

He cheered his heart as he rode along 
With screed of Scripture and holy song, 
Or thought how he rode with his lances 

free 
By the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder-Zee, 
Till his wood -path grew to a trodden 

road, 
And Hilton Point in the distance showed. 

He saw the church with the block-house 

nigh. 
The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby, 
And, tacking to windward, low and crank. 
The little shallop from Strawberry Bank ; 



And he rose in his stirrups and looked 

abroad 
Over land and water, and praised the Lord. 

Goodly and stately and grave to see. 

Into the clearing's space rode he, 

With the sun on the hUt of his sword in 

sheath. 
And his silver buckles and spurs beneath. 
And the settlers welcomed him, one and all, 
From swift Quampeagan to Gonic Fall. 

And he said to the elders : " Lo, I come 
As the way seemed open to seek a home. 
Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by my 

hands 
In the Narragansett and Netherlands, 
And if here ye have work for a Christian 

man, 
I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can. 

" I boast not of gifts, but fain would own 
The wonderful favor God hath sho^vn, 
The special mercy vouchsafed one day 
On the shore of Narragansett Bay, 
As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp aside, 
And mused like Isaac at eventide, 

" A sudden sweetness of peace I found, 
A garment of gladness wrapped me round ; 
I felt from the law of works released, 
The strife of the flesh and spirit ceased, 
My faith to a full assurance grew, 
And all I had hoped for myself I knew. 

"Now, as God appointeth, I keep my 

way, 
I shall not stumble, I shall not stray ; 
He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress, 
I wear the robe of His righteousness ; 
And the shafts of Satan no more avail 
Than Pequot arrows on Christian maU." 

" Tarry with lis," the settlers cried, 
" Thou man of God, as our ruler and guide." 
And Captain Underhill bowed his head. 
" The will of the Lord be done ! '' he said. 
And the morrow beheld him sitting down 
In the ruler's seat in Cocheco town. 

And he judged therein as a just man should ; 
His words w^ere wise and his rule was good ; 
He coveted not his neighbor's land, 
From the holding of bribes he shook his 
band ; 



ii6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And through the camps of the heathen 

ran 
A wholesome fear of the valiant man. 

But the heart is deceitful, the good Book 

saith, 
And life hath ever a savor of death. 
Through hymns of triumph the tempter 

calls, 
And whoso thinketh he standeth falls. 
Alas ! ere their round the seasons ran, 
There was grief in the soul of the saintly 

man. 

The tempter's arrows that rarely fail 
Had found the joints of his spiritual mail ; 
And men took note of his gloomy air. 
The shame in his eye, the halt in his prayer, 
The signs of a battle lost within, 
The pain of a soul in the coils of sin. 

Then a whisper of scandal linked his name 
With broken vows and a life of blame ; 
And the people looked askance on him 
As he walked among them sullen and grim, 
111 at ease, and bitter of word, 
And prompt of quarrel with hand or sword. 

None knew how, with prayer and fasting 

still, 
He strove in the bonds of his evil will ; 
But he shook himself like Samson at length, 
And girded anew his loins of strength. 
And bade the crier go up and down 
And call together the wondering town. 

Jeer and murmur and shaking of head 
Ceased as he rose in his place and said : 
" Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye know 
How I came among you a year ago, 
Strong in the faith that my soul was freed 
From sin of feeling, or thought, or deed. 

"I have sinned, I own it with grief and 

shame. 
But not with a lie on my lips I came. 
In my blindness' I verily thought my heart 
Swept and garnished in every part. 
He chargeth His angels with folly ; He 

sees 
The heavens unclean. Was I more than 

these ? 

" I urge no plea. At your feet I lay , 

The trust you gave me, and go my way. 



Hate me or pity me, as you will, 
The Lord will have mercy on sinners still ; 
And I, who am chiefest, say to all, 
Watch and pray, lest ye also fall." 

No voice made answer : a sob so low 

That only his quickened ear could know 

Smote his heart with a bitter pain. 

As into the forest he rode again, 

And the veil of its oaken leaves shut 

down 
On his latest glimpse of Cocheco town. 

Crystal-clear on the man of sin 

The streams flashed up, and the sky shone 

in ; 
On his cheek of fever the cool wind blew. 
The leaves dropped on him their tears of 

dew. 
And angels of God, in the pure, sweet 

guise 
Of flowers, looked on him with sad surprise. 

Was his ear at fault that brook and breeze 
Sang in their saddest of minor keys ? 
What was it the mournful wood-thrush 

said? 
What wliispered the pine-trees overhead ? 
Did he hear the Voice on his lonely way 
That Adam heard in the cool of day ? 

Into the desert alone rode he, 

Alone with the Infinite Purity ; 

And, bowing his soul to its tender rebuke, 

As Peter did to the Master's look, 

He measured his path with prayers of 

pain 
For peace with God and nature again. 

And in after years to Cocheco came 
The bruit of a once familiar name ; 
How among the Dutch of New Nether- 
lands, 
From wild Danskamer to Haarlem sands, 
A penitent soldier preached the Word, 
And smote the heathen with Gideon's 
sword ! 

And the heart of Boston was glad to hear 
How he harried the foe on the long fron- 
tier, 
And heaped on the land against him barred 
The coals of his generous watch and ward. 
Frailest and bravest ! the Bay State still 
Counts with her worthies John Underbill. 



THE WITCH OF WENHAM 



117 



CONDUCTOR BRADLEY 

A railway conductor who lost his life in an 
accident on a Connecticut railway, May 9, 1873. 

Conductor Bradley, (always may his 

name 
Be said with reverence !) as the swift doom 

came. 
Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled 

frame. 

Sank, with the brake he grasped just where 

he stood 
To do the utmost that a brave man could. 
And die, if needful, as a true man should. 

Men stooped above him ; women dropped 

their tears 
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or 

fears. 
Lost in the strength and glory of his years. 

What heard they ? Lo ! the ghastly lips 

of pain, 
Dead to all thought save duty's, moved 

again : 
" Put out the signals for the other train ! " 

No nobler utterance since the world began 
From lips of saint or martyr ever ran. 
Electric, through the sympathies of man. 

Ah me ! how poor and noteless seem to this 
The sick-bed dramas of self-consciousness, 
Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of 
bliss ! 

Oh, grand, supreme endeavor ! Not in 

vain 
That last brave act of failing tongue and 

brain ! 
Freighted with life the downward rushing 

train. 

Following the wrecked one, as wave follows 

wave. 
Obeyed the warning which the dead lips 

gave. 
Others he saved, himself he could not save. 

Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not dead 
Who in his record still the earth shall tread 
With God's clear aureole shining round his 
bead. 



We bow as in the dust, with all our pride 
Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed be- 
side. 
God give us grace to live as Bradley died ! 



THE WITCH OF WENHAM 

The house is still standing in Danvers, Mass., 
where, it is said, a suspected witch was con- 
fined overnight in the attic, which was bolted 
fast. In the morning, when the constable came 
to take her to Salem for trial, she was missing, 
although the door was still bolted. Her escape 
was doubtless aided by her friends, but at the 
time it was attributed to Satanic interference. 



Along Crane River's sunny slopes 
Blew warm the winds of May, 

And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks 
Tlie green outgrew the gray. 

The grass was green on Rial-side, 

The early birds at will 
Waked up the violet in its dell, 

The wind-flower on its hill. 

' Where go you, in your Sunday coat. 
Son Andrew, tell me, pray." 

■ For striped perch in Wenham Lake 
I go to fish to-day." 

' Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake 

The mottled perch shall be : 

A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank 

And weaves her net for thee. 

• She weaves her golden hair ; she sings 

Her spell-song low and faint ; 
The wickedest witch in Salem jail 
Is to that girl a saint." 

• Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue ; 

God knows," the young man cried, 

• He never made a whiter soul 

Than hers by Wenham side. 

' She tends her mother sick and blind, 
And every want supplies ; 
To her above the blessed Book 
She lends her soft blue eyes. 

• Her voice is glad with holy songs, 

Her lips are sweet with prayer j 



ii8 NARRATIVE AND 


LEGENDARY POEMS 


Go where you will, in ten miles round 


The Black Man's godless sacrament 


Is none more good and fair." 


And signed his dreadful book. 


"Son Andrew, for the love of God 


" Last night my sore-afflicted child 


And of thy mother, stay ! " 


Against the young witch cried. 


She clasped lier hands, she wept aloud, 


To take her Marshal Herrick rides 


But Andrew rode away. 


Even now to Wenham side." 


" reverend sir, my Andrew's soul 


The marshal in his saddle sat, 


The Wenham witch has caught ; 


His daughter at his knee ; 


She holds him with the curled gold 


" I go to fetch that arrant witch, 


Whereof her snare is wrought. 


Thy fair playmate," quoth he. 


" She charms him with her great blue eyes, 


" Her spectre walks the parsonage, 


She binds him with her hair ; 


And haunts both hall and stair ; 


Oh, break the spell with holy words, 


They know her by the great blue eyes 


Unbind him with a prayer ! " 


And floating gold of hair." 


" Take heart," the painful preacher said, 


" They lie, they lie, my father dear ! 


" This mischief shall not be ; 


No fold old witch is she. 


The witch shall perish in her sins 


But sweet and good and crystal-pure 


And Andrew shall go free. 


As Wenham waters be." 


" Our poor Ann Putnam testifies 


" I tell thee, child, the Lord hath set 


She saw her weave a spell. 


Before us good and ill. 


Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of moon, 


And woe to all whose carnal loves 


Around a dried-up well. 


Oppose His righteous will. 


" ' Spring up, well ! ' she softly sang 
The Hebrew's old refrain 


" Between Him and the powers of hell 


Choose thou, my child, to-day : 


(For Satan uses Bible words). 


No sparing hand, no pitying eye, 


Till water flowed amain. 


When God commands to slay ! " 


" And many a goodwife heard her speak 


He went his way ; the old wives shook 


By Wenham water words 


With fear as he drew nigh ; 


That made the buttercups take wings 


The children in the dooryards held 


And turn to yellow birds. 


Their breath as he passed by. 


" They say that swarming wild bees seek 


Too well they knew the gaunt gray 


The hive at her command ; 


horse 


And fishes swim to take their food 


The grim witch-hunter rode, 


From out her dainty hand. 


The pale Apocalyptic beast 




By grisly Death bestrode. 


" Meek as she sits in meeting-time. 




The godly minister 


II 


Notes well the spell that doth compel 




The young men's eyes to her. 


Oh, fair the face of Wenham Lake 




Upon the young girl's shone, 


" The mole upon her dimpled chin 


Her tender mouth, her dreaming eyes, 


Is Satan's seal and sign ; 


Her yellow hair outblown. 


Her lips are red with evil bread 




And stain of unblest wine. 


By happy youth and love attuned 




To natural harmonies. 


** For Tituba, my Indian, saith 


The singing birds, the whispering wind, 


At Quasycung she took 


She sat beneath the trees. 



THE WITCH OF WENHAM 



Sat shaping for her bridal dress 


But up and down the chimney stack 


Her mother's wedding gown, 


The swallows moaned and stirred. 


When lo ! the marshal, writ in hand, 




From Alford hill rode down. 


And o'er her, with a dread surmise 




Of evil sight and sound. 


His face was hard with cruel fear, 


The blind bats on their leathern wings 


He grasped the maiden's hands : 


Went wheeling round and round. 


"Come with me unto Salem town, 




For so the law commands • " 


Low hanging in the midnight sky 




Looked in a half-faced moon. 


*' Oh, let me to my mother say 


Was it a dream, or did she hear 


Farewell before I go ! " 


Her lover's whistled tune ? 


He closer tied her little hands 




Unto his saddle bow. 


She forced the oaken scuttle back ; 




A whisper reached her ear : 


"Unhand me," cried she piteously. 


" Slide down the roof to me," it said, 


"For thy sweet daughter's sake." 


" So softly none may hear." 


" I '11 keep my daughter safe," he said, 




" From the witch of Wenham Lake." 


She slid along the sloping roof 




Till from its eaves she hung. 


" Oh, leave me for my mother's sake, 


And felt the loosened shingles yield 


She needs my eyes to see." 


To which her fingers clung. 


" Those eyes, young witch, the crows shall 




peck 


Below, her lover stretched his hands 


From off the gallows-tree." 


And touched her feet so small ; 




" Drop down to me, dear heart," he said, 


He bore her to a farm-house old 


" My arms sliall break the fall." 


And up its stairway long. 




And closed on her the garret-door 


He set her on his pillion soft, 


With iron bolted strong. 


Her arms about him twined ; 




And, noiseless as if velvet-shod, 


The day died out, the night came down : 


They left the house behind. 


Her evening prayer she said, 




While, through the dark, strange faces 


But when they reached the open way, 


seemed 


Full free the rein he cast ; 


To mock her as she prayed. 


Oh, never through the mirk midnight 




Rode man and maid more fast. 


The present horror deepened all 




The fears her childhood knew ; 


Along the wild wood-paths they sped. 


The awe wherewith the air was filled 


The bridgeless streams they swam ; 


With every breath she drew. 


At set of moon they passed the Bass, 




At sunrise Agawam. 


And could it be, she trembling asked, 




Some secret thought or sin 


At high noon on the Merrimac 


Had shut good angels from her heart 


The ancient ferryman 


And let the bad ones in ? 


Forgot, at times, his idle oars. 




So fair a freight to scan. 


Had she in some forgotten dream 




Let go her hold on Heaven, 


And when from off his grounded boat 


And sold herself unwittingly 


He saw them mount and ride. 


To spirits uuforgiven ? 


" God keep her from the evil eye. 




And harm of witch ! " he cried. 


Oh, weird and still the dark hours 




passed ; 


The maiden laughed, as youth will laugh 


No human sound she heard, 


At all its fears gone by ; 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"He does not know," she whispered 


That wondrous Song of songs. 


low, 


Sensuous and mystical, 


" A little witch am I." 






Whereto devout souls turn 


All day he urged his weary horse, 


In fond, ecstatic dream, 


And, in the red sundown. 


And through its earth-born theme 


Drew rein before a friendly door 


The Love of loves discern. 


In distant Berwick town. 






Proud in the Syrian sun, 


A fellow-feeling for the wronged 


In gold and purple sheen, 


The Quaker people felt ; 


The dusky Ethiop queen 


And safe beside their kindly hearths 


Smiled on King Solomon. 


The hunted maiden dwelt. 






Wisest of men, he knew 


Until from off its breast the land 


The languages of ail 


The haunting horror threw, 


The creatures great or small 


And hatred, born of ghastly dreams. 


That trod the earth or flew. 


To shame and pity grew. 






Across an ant-hill led 


Sad were the year's spring morns, and 


The king's path, and he heard 


sad 


Its small folk, and their word 


Its golden summer day, 


He thus interpreted : 


But blithe and glad its withered fields. 




And skies of ashen gray ; 


" Here comes the king men greet 




As wise and good and just. 


For spell and charm had power no more, 


To crush us in the dust 


The spectres ceased to roam, 


Under his heedless feet." 


And scattered households knelt again 




Around the hearths of home. 


The great king bowed his head. 




And saw the wide surprise 


And when once more by Beaver Dam 


Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes 


The meadow-lark outsaug, 


As he told her what they said. 


And once again on all the hills 




The early violets sprang. 


" king ! " she whispered sweet, 




" Too happy fate have they 


And all the windy pasture slopes 


Who perish in thy way 


Lay green within the arms 


Beneath thy gracious feet ! 


Of creeks that bore the salted sea 




To pleasant inland farms. 


"Thou of the God-lent crown, 




Shall these vile creatures dare 


The smith filed off the chains he forged. 


Murmur against thee where 


The jail-bolts backward fell ; 


The knees of kings kneel down ? " 


And youth and hoary age came forth 




Like souls escaped from hell. 


" Nay," Solomon replied, 




" The wise and strong should seek 




The welfare of the weak," 


KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS 


And turned his horse aside. 


Out from Jerusalem 


His train, with quick alarm. 


The king rode with his great 


Curved with their leader round 


War chiefs and lords of state, 


The ant-hill's peopled mound, 


And Sheba's queen with them ; 


And left it free from harm. 


Comely, but black withal, 


The jewelled head bent low ; 


To whom, perchance, belongs 


" king ! " she said, " henceforth 



IN THE "OLD SOUTH 



The secret of thy worth 
And wisdom well I know. 

' Happy must be the State 
Whose ruler heedeth more 
The murmurs of the poor 
Thau flatteries of the great." 



IN THE "OLD SOUTH" 

On the Sth of July, 1677, Marg'aret Brew- 
ster with four other Friends went into the South 
Church in time of meeting. '' in sackcloth, with 
ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face 
blackened," and delivered " a warning from 
the great God of Heaven and Earth to the 
Rulers and Magistrates of Boston." For the 
offence she was sentenced to be " whipped at 
a cart's tail up and down the Town, with 
twenty lashes." 

She came and stood in the Old South 
Church, 

A wonder and a sign, 
With a look the old-time sibyls wore, 

Half-crazed and half-divine. 

Save the mournful sackcloth about her 
wound. 
Unclothed as the primal mother, 
With limbs that trembled and eyes that 
blazed 
With a fire she dare not smother. 

Loose on her shoulders fell her hair, 

With sprinkled ashes gray ; 
She stood in the broad aisle strange and 
weird 

As a soul at the judgment day. 

And the minister paused in his sermon's 
midst, 
And the people held their breath. 
For these were the words the maiden 
spoke 
Through lips as the lips of death : 

" Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet 
All men my courts shall tread. 

And priest and ruler no more shall eat 
My people up like bread ! 

" Repent ! repent ! ere the Lord shall 
speak 
In thunder and breaking seals ! 



Let all souls worship Him in the way 
His light within reveals." 

She shook the dust from her naked feet. 
And her sackcloth closer drew, 

And into the porch of the awe -hushed 
church 
She passed like a ghost from view. 

They whipped her away at the tail o' the 
cart 
Through half the streets of the town. 
But the words she uttered that day nor 
fire 
Could burn nor water drown. 

And now the aisles of the ancient church 

By equal feet are trod. 
And the bell that swings in its belfry rings 

Freedom to worship God ! 

And now whenever a wrong is done 

It thrills the conscious walls ; 
The stone from the basement cries aloud 

And the beam from the timber calls. 

There are steeple-houses on every hand, 
And pulpits that bless and ban. 

And the Lord will not grudge the single 
church 
That is set apart for man. 

For in two commandments are all the law 
And the prophets under the sun. 

And the first is last and the last is first. 
And the twain are verily one. 

So long as Boston shall Boston be. 
And her bay-tides rise and fall, 

Shall freedom stand in the Old South 
Church 
And plead for the rights of all ! 



THE HENCHMAN 

[Written at the request of a young lady, 
who said to the poet : " Mr. Whittier, you 
never wrote a love song. I do not believe you 
can write one. I wish you would try to write 
one for me to sing." In sending the poem 
afterward to the editor of The Independent, 
Whittipr wrote : " I send, in compliance with 
the wish of Mr. Bowen and thyself, a ballad 
upon which, though not long, I have bestowed 
a good deal of labor. It is not exactly a 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Quakerly piece, nor is it didactic, and it has 
no moral that I know of. But it is, I think, 
natural, simple, and not unpoetical."] 

My lady walks her morning round, 
My lady's page her fleet greyhound, 
My lady's liair the fond winds stir, 
And all the birds make songs for her. 

Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers, 
And Rathburn side is gay with flowers ; 
But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird, 
Was beauty seen or music heard. 

The distance of the stars is hers ; 
The least of all her worshippers, 
The dust beneath her dainty heel. 
She knows not that I see or feel. 

Oh, proud and calm ! — she cannot know 
Where'er she goes with her I go ; 
Oh, cold and fair ! — she cannot guess 
I kneel to share her hound's caress ! 

Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk, 
I rob their ears of her sweet talk ; 
Her suitors come from east and west, 
I steal her smiles from every guest. 

Unheard of her, in loving words, 
I greet her with the song of birds ; 
I reach her with her green -armed bow- 
ers, 
I kiss her with the lips of flowers. 

The hound and I are on her trail, 
The wind and I uplift her veil ; 
As if the calm, cold moon she were. 
And I the tide, I follow her. 

As unrebuked as they, I share 
The license of the sun and air, 
And in a common homage hide 
My worship from her scorn and pride. 

World-wide apart, and yet so near, 
I breathe her charmed atmosphere. 
Wherein to her my service brings 
The reverence due to holy things. 

Her maiden pride, her haughty name, 
My dumb devotion shall not shame ; 
The love that no return doth crave 
To knightly levels lifts the slave. 



No lance have I, in joust or fight, 
To splinter in my lady's sight ; 
But, at her feet, how blest were I 
For any need of hers to die ! 



THE DEAD FEAST OF THE 
KOL-FOLK 

E. B. Tylor in his Primitive Culture, chapter 
xii., gives an account of the reverence paid the 
dead by the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur, Assam. 
" When a Ho or Munda," he says, "has been 
burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels 
of his bones are carried in procession with a 
solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to 
the deep-sounding drum, and when the old 
woman who carries the bones on her bamboo 
tray lowers it from time to time, tlien girls 
who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully 
reverse them to show that they are empty ; thus 
the remains are taken to visit every house in the 
village, and every dwelling of a friend or rela- 
tive for miles, and the inmates come out to 
mourn and praise the goodness of the departed ; 
the bones are carried to all the dead man's 
favorite haimts, to the fields he cultivated, to 
the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor 
where he worked, to the village dance-room 
where he made merry. At last they are taken 
to the grave, and bm-ied in an earthen vase 
upon a store of food, covered with one of those 
huge stone slabs which European visitors won- 
der at in the districts of the aborigines of 
India." In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, 
Bengal, vol. ix. p. 795, is a Ho dirge. 

We have opened the door, 

Once, twice, thrice ! 
We have swept the floor, 

We have boiled the rice. 
Come hither, come hither ! 
Come from the far lands, 
Come from the star lands. 

Come as before ! 
We lived long together. 
We loved one another ; 

Come back to our life. 
Come father, come nuither. 
Come sister and brotber. 

Child, husband, and wife, 
For you we are sighing. 
Come take your old places. 
Come look in our faces. 
The dead on the dying, 
Come home ! 



THE KHAN'S DEVIL 123 


We have opened the door, 


Nor seeing nor hearing, 


Once, twice, thrice ! 


We wait without fearing 


We have kindled the coals, 


To feel you draw near. 


And we boil the rice 


dead, to the dying 


For the feast of souls. 


Come home ! 


Come hither, come hither ! 




Think not we fear you. 




Whose hearts are so near you. 


THE KHAN'S DEVIL 


Come tenderly thought on, 




Come all unforgotten. 


The Khan came from Bokhara town 


Come from the shadow-lands, 


To Hamza, santon of renown. 


From the dim meadow-lands 




Where the pale grasses bend 


" My head is sick, my hands are weak ; 


Low to our sighing. 


Thy help, holy man, I seek." 


Come father, come mother, 




Come sister and brother, 


In silence marking for a space 


Come husband and friend, 


The Khan's red eyes and purple face, 


The dead to the dying. 




Come home ! 


Thick voice, and loose, uncertain tread, 




" Thou hast a devil ! " Hamza said- 


We have opened the door 




You entered so oft ; 


" Allah forbid ! " exclaimed the Khan. 


For the feast of souls 


" Rid me of him at once, man ! " 


We have kindled the coals. 




Aiid we boil the rice soft. 


" Nay," Hamza said, " no spell of mine 


Come you who are dearest 


Can slay that cursed thing of thine. 


To us who are nearest, 




Come hither, come hither. 


" Leave feast and wine, go forth and drink 


From out the wild weather ; 


Water of healing on the brink 


The storm clouds are flying, 




The peepul is sighing ; 


"Where clear and cold from mountain 


Come in from the rain. 


snows. 


Come father, come mother, 


The Nahr el Zeben downward flows. 


Come sister and brother. 




Come husband and lover, 


" Six moons remain, then come to me ; 


Beneath our roof-cover. 


May Allah's pity go with thee ! " 


Look on us again. 




The dead on the dying. 


Awestruck, from feast and wine the Khan 


Come home ! 


Went forth where Nahr el Zeben ran. 


We have opened the door ! 


Roots were his food, the desert dust 


For the feast of souls 


His bed, the water quenched his thirst ; 


We have kindled the coals 




We may kindle no more ! 


And when the sixth moon's scimitar 


Snake, fever, and famine. 


Curved sharp above the evening star, 


The curse of the Brahmin, 




The sun and the dew, 


He sought again the santon's door, 


They burn us, they bite us. 


Not weak and trembling as before, 


They waste us and smite us ; 




Our days are but few ! 


But strong of limb and clear of brain ; 


In strange lands far yonder 


"Behold," he said, "the fiend is slain." 


To wonder and wander 




We hasten to you. 


"Nay," Hamza answered, "starved and 


List then to our sighing. 


drowned. 


While yet we are here ; 


The curst one lies in death-like s wound. 



124 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" But evil breaks the strongest gyves, 
And jins like bim have charmed lives. 

" One beaker of the juice of grape 
May call him up in living shape. 

" When the red wine of Badakshan 
Sparkles for thee, beware, O Khan ! 

" With water quench the fire within, 
And drown each day thy devilkiu ! " 

Thenceforth the great Khan shunned the cup 
As Shitan's own, though offered up, 

With laughing eyes and jewelled hands. 
By Yarkaud's maids and Samarcaud's. 

And, in the lofty vestibule 

Of the medress of Kaush Kodul, 

The students of the holy law 
A golden-lettered tablet saw, 

With these words, by a cunning hand, 
Graved on it at the Khan's command : 

"In Allah's name, to him who hath 
A devil. Khan el Hamed saith, 

" Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine : 
The fiend that loves the breath of wine 

" No prayer can slay, no marabout 
Nor Meccan dervis can drive out. 

"I, Khan el Hamed, know the charm 
That robs him of his power to harm. 

"Drown him, O Islam's child ! the spell 
To save thee lies in tank and well ! " 

THE KING'S MISSIVE 
1661 
This ballad, orig-inally written for The Memo- 
rial History of Boston, describes, with pardon- 
able poetic license, a memorable incident in 
the annals of the city. The interview between 
Shattuck and the Governor took place, I have 
since learned, in the residence of the latter, and 
not in the Council Chamber. The publication 
of the ballad led to some discussion as to the 
historical truthfulness of the picture, but I have 
seen no reason to rub out any of the figures or 
alter the lines and colors. 



Under the great hill sloping bare 

To cove and meadow and Common lot, 
In his council chamber and oaken chair. 
Sat the worshipful Governor Eudicott. 
A grave, strong man, who knew no peer 
In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear 
Of God, not man, and for good or ill 
Held his trust with an iron will. 

He had shorn with his sword the cross frona 
out 

The Hag, and cloven the May-pole down, 
Harried the heathen round about. 

And whipped the Quakers from town to 
town. 
Earnest and honest, a man at need 
To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed, 
He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal 
The gate of the holy common weal. 

His brow was clouded, his eye was stern, 
With a look of mingled sorrow and 

wrath ; 
" Woe 's me ! " he murmured : " at every 

turn 
The pestilent Quakers are in my path ! 
Some we have scourged, and banished some, 
Some hanged, more doomed, and still they 

come. 
Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, 
Sowing their heresy's seed of sin. 

" Did we count on this ? Did we leave be- 
hind 
The graves of our kin, the comfort and 
ease 
Of our English hearths and homes, to find 

Troublers of Israel such as these ? 
Shall I spare ? Shall I pity them ? God 

forbid ! 
I will do as the prophet to Agag did : 
They come to poison the wells of the Word, 
I will hew them in pieces before the Lord ! " 

The door swung open, and Rawson the clerk 

Entered, and whispered under breath, 
" There waits below for the hangman's work 

A fellow banished on pain of death — 
Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the whip, 
Brought over in Master Goldsmith's ship 
At anchor here in a Christian port, 
With freight of the devil and all his sort ! " 

Twice and thrice on the chamber floor 
Striding fiercely from wall to wall. 



THE KING'S MISSIVE 



135 



" The Lord do so to me aud more," 

The Governor cried, " if I hang not all ! 
Bring hither the Quaker." Cahn, sedate, 
With the look of a man at ease with fate. 
Into that presence grim and dread 
Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on head. 

" Off with the knave's hat ! " An angry 
hand 
Smote down the offence ; but the wearer 
said. 
With a quiet smile, "By the king's com- 
mand 
I bear his message and stand in his stead." 
In the Governor's hand a missive he laid 
With the royal arms on its seal displayed, 
And the proud man spake as he gazed 

thereat, 
Uncovering, " Give Mr. Shattuck his hat." 

He turned to the Quaker, bowing low, — 
"The king commandeth your friends' 

release ; 
Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although 

To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. 
What he here enjoineth, John Eudicott, 
His loyal servant, questioneth not. 
You are free ! God grant the spirit you 

own 
May take you from us to parts unknown." 

So the door of the jail was open cast. 

And, like Daniel, out of the lion's den 
Tender youth and girlhood passed, 

With age-bowed women and gray-locked 
men. 
And the voice of one appointed to die 
Was lifted in praise and thanks on high. 
And the little maid from New Netherlands 
Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands. 

And one, whose call was to minister 

To the souls in prison, beside him went, 
An ancient woman, bearing with her 

The linen shroud for his burial meant. 
For she, not counting her own life dear, 
In the strength of a love that cast out fear. 
Had watched and served where her brethren 

died. 
Like those who waited the cross beside. 

One moment they paused on their way to 
look 
On the martyr graves by the Common 
side, 



And much scourged Wharton of Salem took 

His burden of prophecy up aud cried : 
" Rest, souls of the valiant ! Not in vain 
Have ye borne the Master's cross of pain ; 
Ye have fought the fight, ye are victors 

crowned. 
With a fourfold chain ye have Satan 

bound ! " 

The autumn haze lay soft and still 

On wood aud meadow and upland farms ; 
On the brow of Snow Hill the great wind- 
mill 
Slowly and lazily swimg its arras ; 
Broad in the sunshine stretched away, 
With its capes and islands, the turquoise 

bay ; 
And over water and dusk of pines 
Blue hills lifted their faint outlines. 

The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, 
The sumach added its crimson fleck, 
And double in air and water showed 

The tinted maples along the Neck ; 
Through frost flower clusters of pale star- 
mist. 
And gentian fringes of amethyst. 
And royal plumes of golden-rod, 
The grazing cattle on Gentry trod. 

But as they who see not, the Quakers saw 
The world about them ; they only thought 
With deep thanksgiving and pious awe 
On the great deliverance God had 
wrought. 
Through lane and alley the gazing town 
Noisily followed them up and down ; 
Some with scoffing and brutal jeer, 
Some with pity and words of cheer. 

One brave voice rose above the din. 

Upsall, gray with his length of days, 
Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn : 

" Men of Boston, give God the praise ! 
No more shall innocent blood call dowTi 
The bolts of wrath on your guilty town. 
The freedom of worship, dear to you, 
Is dear to all, and to all is due. 

" I see the vision of days to come, 
When your beautiful City of the Bay 

Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home, 
And none shall his neighbor's rights 
gainsay. 

The varying notes of worship shall blend 



[26 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Aud as one great prayer to God ascend, 
And hands of mutual charity raise 
Walls of salvation and gates of praise." 

So passed the Quakers tlirough Boston 
town, 

Whose painful ministers sighed to see 
The walls of their sheep-fold falling down. 

And wolves of heresy prowling free. 
But the years went on, and brought no 

wrong ; 
With milder counsels the State grew strong. 
As outward Letter and inward Light 
Kept the balance of truth aright. 

The Puritan spirit perishing not. 

To Concord's yeomen the signal sent, 
And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot 
That severed the chains of a continent. 
With its gentler mission of peace and good- 
will 
The thought of the Quaker is living still, 
Aud the freedom of soul he prophesied 
Is gospel and law where the martyrs died. 



VALUATION 

The old Squire said, as he stood by his 
gate. 

And his neighbor, the Deacon, went by, 
" In spite of my bank stock and real estate. 

You are better off. Deacon, than I. 

*' We 're botli growing old, and the end 's 
drawing near. 
You have less of this world to resign. 
But in Heaven's appraisal your assets, I 
fear. 
Will reckon uj) greater than mine. 

" They say I am rich, but I 'm feeling so 
poor, 
I wish I could swap with you even : 
The pounds I have lived for and laid up in 
store 
For the shillings and pence you have 
given." 

" Well, Squire," said the Deacon, with 
shrewd common sense, 
While his eye had a twinkle of fun, 
" Let your pounds take the way of my shil- 
lings and pence. 
And the thing can be easily done ! " 



RABBI ISHMAEL 

"Rabbi Ishmael Ben Elisha said, Once I 
entered into the Holy of Holies [as High Priest] 
to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel [the Di- 
vine Crown] Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon 
a throne, high and lifted up, who said unto 
me, ' Ishmael, my son, bless me.' I answered, 
''May it please Thee to make Thy compassion pre- 
vail over Thine anger ; may it be revealed above 
Thy other attributes; mayest Thou deal with 
Thy children according to it, and not according 
to the strict measure of judgment.^ It seemed to 
me that He bowed His head, as tliough to an- 
swer Amen to my blessing." — Talmud (Bera- 
choth, i. f. 6 b.). 

The Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin 
Of the world heavy upon him, entering in 
The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face 
With terrible splendor tilling all the place. 
" O Ishmael Ben Elisha ! " said a voice, 
" What seekest thou ? What blessing is 

thy choice ? " 
And, knowing that he stood before the Lord, 
Within the shadow of tlie cherubim. 
Wide-winged between the blinding light 

and him. 
He bowed himself, and uttered not a word. 
But in the silence of his soul was prayer : 
" O Thou Eternal ! I am one of all, 
And nothing ask that others may not share. 
Thou art almighty ; we are weak and 

small. 
And yet Thy children : let Thy mercy 

spare ! " 
Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the 

place 
Of the insufferable glory, lo ! a face 
Of more than mortal tenderness, that bent 
Graciously down in token of assent. 
And, smiling, vanished ! With strange joy 

elate, 
The wondering Rabbi sought the temple's 

gate. 
Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he 

stood 
And cried aloud unto the multitude : 
" O Israel, hear I The Lord our God is 

good ! 
Mine eyes have seen His glory and His 

grace ; 
Beyond His judgments shall His love en- 
dure ; 
The mercy of the All Merciful is sure ! " 



THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS 



127 



THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE 

H. Y. Hind, in Explorations in the Interior of 
the Labrador Peninsula (ii. 166), mentions the 
finding of a rock tomb near the little fishing' 
port of Bradore, with the inscription upon it 
which is given in the poem. 

A DREAR and desolate shore ! 
Where uo tree unfolds its leaves, 
And never the spring wind weaves 
Green grass for the hunter's tread ; 
A land forsaken and dead, 
Where the ghostly icebergs go 
And come with the ebb and Sow 

Of the waters of Bradore ! 

A wanderer, from a land 

By summer breezes fanned, 

Looked round him, awed, subdued, 

By the dreadful solitude, 

Hearing alone the cry 

Of sea-birds clanging by, 

The crash and grind of the floe. 

Wail of wind and wash of tide. 

" O wretched land ! " he cried, 

" Land of all lands the worst, 

God forsaken and curst ! 

Thy gates of rock should show 

The words the Tuscan seer 
Read in the Realm of Woe : 

Hope entereth not here J " 

Lo ! at his feet there stood 
A block of smooth larch wood. 
Waif of some wandering wave, 
Beside a rock-closed cave 
By Nature fashioned for a grave ; 
Safe from the ravening bear 
And fierce fowl of the air. 
Wherein to rest was laid 
A twenty summers' maid, 
Whose blood had equal share 
Of the lands of vine and snow. 
Half French, half Eskimo. 
In letters nneffaced, 
Upon the block were traced 
The grief and hope of man. 
And thus the legend ran : 

" We loved her ! 
Words cannot tell how well ! 

We loved her ! 

God loved her ! 
And called her home to peace and rest. 

We love her!" 



The stranger paused and read. 

" O winter land ! " he said, 

" Thy right to be I own ; 

God leaves thee not alone. 

And if thy fierce winds blow 

Over drear wastes of rock and snow, 

And at thy iron gates 

The ghostly iceberg waits. 

Thy homes and hearts are dear. 
Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dust 
Is sanctified by hope and trust ; 

God's love and man's are here. 
And love where'er it goes 
Makes its own atmosphere ; 
Its flowers of Paradise 
Take root in the eternal ice. 

And bloom through Polar snows ! " 

THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS 

The volume in which The Bay of Seven Is- 
lands was published was dedicated to the late 
Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to 
any other person I was indebted for public re- 
cognition as one worthy of a place in American 
literature, at a time when it required a great 
degree of courage to urge such a claim for 
a proscribed abolitionist. Although younger 
than I, he had gained the reputation of a bril- 
liant essayist, and was regarded as the highest 
American authority in criticism. His wit and 
wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of 
young men, including Thomas Starr King, the 
eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell, of 
the Daily Transcript, who gathered about our 
common friend James T. Fields at the Old 
Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title 
to the volume I inscribed to my friend and 
neighbor, Harriet Prescott SpofFord, whose 
poems have lent a new interest to our beauti- 
ful river-valley. 

From the green Amesbury hill which bears 

the name 
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine 
Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago, 
Down the long valley of the Merrimac, 
Midway between me and the river's mouth, 
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest 
Among Deer Island's immemorial pines. 
Crowning the crag on wliich the sunset 

breaks 
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song. 
Which thou hast told or sung, I call to 

mind. 
Softening with silvery mist the woods and 

hhls. 



128 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The out-thriist headlands and inreaching 
bays 

Of our northeastern coast-line, trending 
where 

The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill block- 
ade 

Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate. 

To thee the echoes of the Island Sound 
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan 
Of the South Breaker prophesying storm. 
And thou hast listened, like myself, to men 
Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies 
Like a fell spider in its web of fog. 
Or where the Grand Bank shallows with 

the wrecks 
Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange 

isles 
And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations 

seem 
Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove, 
Nubble and Boon, the common names of 

home. 
So let me offer thee this lay of mine. 
Simple and homely, lacking much thy play 
Of color and of fancy. If its theme 
And treatment seem to thee befitting youth 
Rather than age, let this be my excuse : 
It has beguiled some heavy hours and called 
Some pleasant memories up ; and, better 

still. 
Occasion lent me for a kindly word 
To one who is my neighbor and my friend. 



The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth. 
Leaving the apple-bloom of the South 
For the ice of the Eastern seas, 
In his fishing schooner Breeze. 

Handsome and brave and young was he. 
And the maids of Newbury sighed to see 

His lessening white sail fall 

Under the sea's blue wall. 

Through the Northern Gulf and the misty 

screen 
Of the isles of Miugan and Madeleine, 

St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon, 

The little Breeze sailed on. 

Backward and forward, along the shore 
Of lorn and desolate Labrador, 

And found at last her way 

To the Seven Islands Bay. 



The little hamlet, nestling below 
Great hills wliite with lingering snow, 
With its tin-roofed chapel stood 
Half hid in the dwai-f spruce wood ; 

Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost 
Of summer upon the dreary coast. 

With its gardens small and spare, 

Sad in the frosty air. 

Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay, 
A fisherman's cottage looked away 

Over isle and bay, and behind 

On mountains dim-defined. 

And there twin sisters, fair and young, 
Laughed with their stranger guest, and 
sung 

In their native tongue the lays 

Of the old Proven^^al days. 

Alike were they, save the faint outline 
Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine ; 
And both, it so befell. 
Loved the heretic stranger well. 

Both were pleasant to look upon. 

But the heart of the skipper clave to one ; 

Though less by his eye than heart 

He knew the twain apart. 

Despite of alien race and creed. 

Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed ; 

And the mother's wrath was vain 

As the sister's jealous pain. 

Tlie shrill-tongued mistress her house for- 
bade. 
And solemn warning was sternly said 

By the black-robed priest, whose word 

As law the hamlet heard. 

But half by voice and half by signs 
The skipper said, " A warm sun shines 

On the green-banked Merrimac ; 

Wait, watch, till I come back. 

" And when you see, froip my mast head. 
The signal fly of a kerchief i-ed. 

My boat on the shore shall wait; 

Come, when the night is late." 

Ah ! weighed with childhood's haunts and 

friends. 
And all that the home sky overbends. 



THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS 



129 



Did ever young love fail 
To turn the trembling scale ? 

Under the night, on the wet sea sands, 
Slowly unclasped their plighted hands : 
One to the cottage hearth, 
And one to his sailor's berth. 

What was it the parting lovers heard ? 

Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird. 
But a listener's stealthy tread 
On the rock-moss, crisp and dead. 

He weighed his anchor, and fished once 
more 

By the black coast-line of Labrador ; 

And by love and the north wind driven, 
Sailed back to the Islands Seven. 

In the sunset's glow the sisters twain 
Saw the Breeze come sailing in again ; 

Said Suzette, " Mother dear, 

The heretic's sail is here." 

" Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide ; 

Your door shall be bolted ! " the mother 
cried : 
While Suzette, ill at ease. 
Watched the red sign of the Breeze. 

At midnight, down to the waiting skiff 
She stole in the shadow of the cliff ; 
And out of the Bay's mouth ran 
The schooner with maid and man. 

And all night long, on a restless bed. 

Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said : 

And thought of her lover's pain 

Waiting for her in vain. 

Did he pace the sands ? Did he pause to 
hear 

The sound of her light step drawing near ? 
And, as the slow hours passed. 
Would he doubt her faith at last ? 

But when she saw through the misty pane. 
The morning break on a sea of rain, 
Could even her love avail 
To follow his vanished sail ? 

Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind, 
Left the rugged Moisic hills behind, 

And heard from an unseen shore 

The falls of Manitou roar. 



morn in the thick, gray 



On the morrow'! 

weather 
They sat on the reeling deck together. 

Lover and counterfeit 

Of hapless Marguerite. 

With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair 
He smoothed away her jet-black hair, 

What was it his fond eyes met ? 

The scar of the false Suzette ! 

Fiercely he shouted : " Bear away 
East by north for the Seven Isles Bay ! " 
The maiden wept and prayed, 
But the ship her helm obeyed. 

Once more the Bay of the Isles they found : 
They heard the bell of the chapel sound, 
And the chant of the dying sung 
In the harsh, wild Indian tongue. 

A feeling of mystery, change, and awe 
Was in all they heard and all they saw : 
Spell-bound the hamlet lay 
In the hush of its lonely bay. 

And when they came to the cottage door, 
The mother rose up from her weeping sore, 

And with angry gestures met 

The scared look of Suzette. 

" Here is your daughter," the skipper said ; 
" Give me the one I love instead." 

But the woman sternly spake ; 

" Goj see if the dead will wake ! " 

He looked. Her sweet face still and white 
And strange in the noonday taper light, 

She lay on her little bed, 

With the cross at her feet and head. 

In a passion of grief the strong man bent 
Down to her face, and, kissing it, went 

Back to the waiting Breeze, 

Back to the mournful seas. 

Never again to the Merrimac 

And Newbury's homes that bark came back 
Whether her fate she met 
On the shores of Carraquette, 

Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say ? 
But even yet at Seven Isles Bay 

Is told the ghostly tale 

Of a weird, unspoken sail, 



I30 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



In the pale, sad light of the Northern 
day 

Seen by the blanketed Montagnais, 
Or squaw, in her small kyack, 
Crossing the spectre's track. 

On the deck a maiden wrings her hands ; 

Her likeness kneels on the gray coast 
sands ; 
One in her wild despair, 
And one in the trance of prayer. 

She flits before no earthly blast, 

The red sign fluttering from her mast, 

Over the solemn seas, 

The ghost of the schooner Breeze ! 



THE WISHING BRIDGE 

Among the legends sung or said 

Along our rocky shore. 
The Wishing Bridge of JNIarblehead 

May well be sung once more. 

An hundred years ago (so ran 

The old-time story) all 
Good wishes said above its span 

Would, soon or late, befall. 

If pure and earnest, never failed 

The prayers of man or maid 
For him who on the deep sea sailed, 

For her at home who stayed. 

Once thither came two girls from school, 

And wished in childish glee : 
And one would be a queen and rule, 

And one the world would see. 

Time passed ; with change of hopes and 
fears. 

And in the self-same place, 
Two women, gray with middle years. 

Stood, wondering, face to face. 

With wakened memories, as they met. 

They queried what had been : 
" A poor man's wife am I, and yet," 

Said one, " I am a queen. 

" My realm a little homestead is. 
Where, lacking crown and throne, 

I rule by loving services 
And patient toil alone." 



The other said : " The great world lies 

Beyond me as it lay ; 
O'er love's and duty's boundaries 

My feet may never stray. 

" I see but common sights of home, 

Its common sounds I hear, 
My widowed mother's sick-bed room 

Sufficeth for my sphere. 

" I read to her some pleasant page 

Of travel far and wide. 
And in a dreamy pilgrimage 

We wander side by side. 

" And when at last she falls asleep. 

My book becomes to me 
A magic glass : my watch I keep. 

But all the world I see. 

" A farm-wife queen your place you fill, 

While fancy's privilege 
Is miue to walk the earth at will. 

Thanks to the Wishing Bridge." 

" Nay, leave the legend for the truth," 

The other cried, " and say 
God gives the wishes of our youth. 

But in His own best way ! " 



HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM 
DOVER 

The following is a copy of the warrant is- 
sned by Major Waldron, of Dover, in 16(52. 
The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied 
against him, and saw, as they supposed, the 
fulfilment of their prophecy when, many years 
after, he was killed by the Indians. 

To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, 
Newbury, Roicley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, 
Boston, Roxbury.Dedhayn, and until these vaga- 
bond Quakers are carried out ofth is jurisdiction. 

You, and every one of you, are required, in 
the King's Majesty's name, to take these vag- 
abond Quakers, Anne Colman, Mary Tomkins, 
and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the 
cart's tail, and driving the cart through your 
several towns, to whip them upon their naked 
backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each 
of them, in each town ; and so to convey them 
from constable to constable till they are out of 
this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your 
peril ; and this shall he your warrant. 

RicHAED Waldron. 
Dated at Dover, December 22, 1662. 



HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER 



This warrant was executed only in Dover and 
Hampton. At Salisbury the constable refused 
to obey it. He was sustained by the town's 
people, who were under the influence of Major 
Robert Pike, the leading man in the lower val- 
ley of the iNlerrimac, who stood far in advance 
of his time, as an advocate of religious freedom 
and an opponent of ecclesiastical authority. 
He had the moral courage to address an able 
and manly letter to the court at Salem, remon- 
strating against the mtchcraft trials. 

The tossing spray of Cocbeco's fall 

Hardened to ice on its rocky wall, 

As through Dover town in the chill, gray 

dawn, 
Three women passed, at the cart - tail 

drawn ! 

Bared to the waist, for the north wind's grip 
And keener sting of the constable's whip. 
The blood that followed each hissing blow 
Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow. 

Priest and ruler, boy and maid 
Followed the dismal cavalcade ; 
And from door and window, open thrown, 
Looked and wondered gaffer and crone. 

" God is our witness," the victims cried, 
" We suffer for Him who for all men died ; 
The wrong ye do has been done before. 
We bear the stripes that the Master bore ! 

" And thou, O Richard Waldron, for whom 
We hear the feet of a coming doom. 
On thy cruel heart and thy hand of wrong 
Vengeance is sure, though it tarry long. 

" In the light of the Lord, a flame we see 
Climb and kindle a proud roof-tree ; 
And beneath it an old man lying dead, 
With stains of blood on his hoary head." 

" Smite, Goodman Hate - Evil ! — harder 
still ! " 

The magistrate cried , " lay on with a will ! 

Drive out of their bodies the Father of 
Lies, 

Who through them preaches and prophe- 
sies ! " 

So into the forest they held their way, 
By winding river and frost-rimmed bay, 
Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat 
Of the winter sea at their icy feet. 



The Indian hunter, searching his traps, 
Peered stealthily through the forest gaps ; 
And the outlying settler shook his head, — 
" They 're witches going to jail," he said. 

At last a meeting-house came in view ; 
A blast on his horn the constable blew ; 
And the boys of Hampton cried up and down 
" The Quakers have come ! " to the won- 
dering town. 

From barn and woodpile the goodman came ; 
The goodwife quitted her quilting frame. 
With her child at her breast ; and, hobbling 

slow, 
The graudam followed to see the show. 

Once more the torturing whip was swung, 
Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stimg. 
" Oh, spare ! they are bleeding ! " a little 

maid cried, 
And covered her face the sight to bide. 

A murmur ran round the crowd : " Good 

folks," 
Quoth the constable, busy counting the 

strokes, 
" No pity to wretches like these is due, 
Thev have beaten the gospel black and 

blue ! " 

Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear. 
With her wooden noggin of milk drew near. 
" Drink, poor hearts ! " a rude hand smote 
Her draught away from a parching throat. 

" Take heed," one whispered, " they '11 take 

your cow 
For fines, as they took your horse and 

plough, 
A nd the bed from vinder you." " Even so," 
She said ; " they are cruel as death, I know." 

Then on they passed, in the waning day. 
Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way ; 
By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare. 
And glimpses of blue sea here and there. 

By the meeting-house in Salisbury town, 
The sufferers stood, in the red sundown, 
Bare for the lash ! O pitying Night, 
Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight ! 

With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip 
The Salisbury constable dropped his whip. 



132 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" This warrant means murder foul and red ; 
Cursed is be who serves it," he said. 

" Show me the order, and meanwhile strike 
A blow at your peril ! " said Justice Pike. 
Of all the rulers the land possessed, 
Wisest and boldest was he and best. 

He scoffed at witchcraft ; the priest he met 
As man meets man ; his feet he set 
Beyond his dark age, standing upright, 
Soul-free, with his face to the morning light. 

He read the warrant : " These convey 
From our precincts ; at every town on the loay 
Give each ten lashes." " God judge the 

brute ! 
I tread his order under my foot ! 

" Cut loose these poor ones and let them 

go ; 
Come what will of it, all men shall know 
No warrant is good, though backed by the 

Crown, 
For whipping women in Salisbury town ! " 

The hearts of the villagers, half released 
From creed of terror and rule of priest, 
By a primal instinct owned the right 
Of human pity in law's despite. 

For ruth and chivalry only slept, 
His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept ; 
Quicker or slower, the same blood ran 
In the Cavalier and the Puritan. 

The Quakers sank on their knees in praise 
And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze 
Flashed out from under a cloud, and shed 
A golden glory on each bowed head. 

The tale is one of an evil time. 

When souls were fettered and thought was 

crime, 
And heresy's whisper above its breath 
Meant shameful scourging and bonds and 

death ! 

What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried, 
Even woman rebuked and prophesied, 
And soft words rarely answered back 
The grim persuasion of whip and rack ! 

If her cry from the whipping-post and jail 
Pierced sharp as the Keuite's driven nail, 



O woman, at ease in these happier days. 
Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways ! 

How much thy beautiful life may owe 

To her faith and courage thou canst not 
know, 

Nor how from the paths of thy calm re- 
treat 

She smoothed the thorns with her bleeding 
feet. 



SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST 

A TALE for Roman guides to tell 

To careless, sight-worn travellers still. 

Who pjvuse beside the narrow cell 
Of Gregory on the Cselian Hill. 

One day before the monk's door came 
A beggar, stretching empty palms, 

Fainting and fast-sick, in the name 
Of the Most Holy asking alms. 

And the monk answered, " All I have 
In this poor cell of mine I give. 

The silver cup my mother gave ; 

In Christ's name take thou it, and 
live." 

Years passed ; and, called at last to bear 
The pastoral crook and keys of Rome, 

The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair, 
Sat the crowned lord of Christendom. 

" Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried, 
" And let twelve beggars sit thereat." 

The beggars came, and one beside. 
An unknown stranger, with them sat. 

" I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake, 
" O stranger ; but if need be thine, 

I bid thee welcome, for the sake 

Of Him who is thy Lord and mine." 

A grave, calm face the stranger raised. 
Like His who on Gennesaret trod. 

Or His oi> whom the Chaldeans gazed. 
Whose form was as the Son of God. 

" Know'st thou," he said, " thy gift of 
old?" 

And in the hand he lifted up 
The Pontiff marvelled to behold 

Once more his mother's silver cup. 



BIRCHBROOK MILL 



^33 



"Thy prayers and alms have risen, and 


By day the sunlight through the leaves 


bloom 


Falls on its moist, green sod, 


Sweetly among the flowers of heaven. 


And wakes the violet bloom of spring 


I am The Wonderful, through whom 


And autumn's golden-rod. 


Whate'er thou askest shall be given." 






Its birches whisper to the wind, 


He spake and vanished. Gregory fell 


The swallow dips her wings 


With his twelve guests in mute accord 


In the cool spray, and on its banks 


Prone on their faces, knowing well 


The gray song-sparrow sings. 


Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord. 






But from it, when the dark night falls, 


The old-time legend is not vain ; 


The school-girl shrinks with dread ; 


Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul, 


The farmer, home-bound from his fields, 


Telling it o'er and o'er again 


Goes by with quickened tread. 


On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall. 






They dare not pause to hear the grind 


Still wheresoever pity shares 


Of shadowy stone on stone ; 


Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin, 


The plashing of a water-wheel 


And love the beggar's feast prepares, 


Where wheel there now is none. 


The uninvited Guest comes in. 






Has not a cry of pain been heard 


Unheard, because our ears are dull. 


Above the clattering mill ? 


Unseen, because our eyes are dim, 


The pawing of an unseen horse, 


He walks our earth. The Wonderful, 


Who waits his mistress still ? 


And all good deeds are done to Him. 






Yet never to^ the listener's eye 




Has sight confirmed the sound ; 


♦ 


A wavering birch line marks alone 


BIRCHBROOK MILL 


The vacant pasture ground. 


A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook runs 


No ghostly arms fling up to heaven 


Beneath its leaning trees ; 


The agony of prayer ; 


That low, soft ripple is its own. 


No spectral steed impatient shakes 


That dull roar is the sea's. 


His white mane on the air. 


Of human signs it sees alone 


The meaning of that common dread 


The distant church spire's tip, 


No tongue has fitly told ; 


And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray, 


The secret of the dark surmise 


The white sail of a ship. 


The brook and birches hold. 


No more a toiler at the wheel. 


What nameless horror of the past 


It wanders at its will ; 


Broods here forevermore ? 


Nor dam nor pond is left to tell 


What ghost his unforgiven sin 


Where once was Birchbrook mill. 


Is grinding o'er and o'er ? 


The timbers of that mill have fed 


Docs, then, immortal memory play 


Long since a farmer's fires ; 


The actor's tragic part. 


His doorsteps are the stones that ground 


Rehearsals of a mortal life 


The harvest of his sires. 


And unveiled human heart ? 



Man trespassed here ; but Nature lost 

No right of her domain ; 
She waited, and she brought the old 

Wild beauty back again. 



God's pity spare a guilty soul 

That drama of its ill, 
And let the scenic curtain fall 

On Birchbrook's haunted mill ! 



134 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE TWO ELIZABETHS 

Head at the unveiling' of the bust of Elizabeth 
Fry at the Friends' School, Providence, K. I. 

A. D. 1207 

Amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, 
A high-born princess, servant of the poor. 
Sweetening with gracious words the food 
she dealt 
To starving throngs at Wartburg's bla- 
zoned door. 

A blinded zealot held her soul in chains, 
Cramped the sweet nature that he could 
not kill, 
Scarred her fair body with his penance- 
pains, 
And gauged her conscience by his narrow 
will. 

God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace, 
With fast and vigil she denied them all ; 

Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face, 
She followed meekly at her stern guide's 
call. 

So drooped and died her home-blown rose 
of bliss 
In the chill rigor of a discipline 
That turned her fond lips from her chil- 
dren's kiss, 
And made her joy of motherhood a sin. 

To their sad level by compassion led, 

One with the low and vile herself she 
made, 
While thankless misery mocked the hand 
that fed. 
And laughed to scorn her piteous mas- 
querade. 

But still, with patience that outwearied 
hate, 
She gave her all while yet she had to 
give; 
And then her empty hands, importunate, 
In prayer she lifted that the poor might 
live. 

Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more 
hard to bear, 
And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh con- 
trol, 



She kept life fragrant with good deeds and 
prayer, 
And fresh and pure the white flower of 
her soul. 

Death found her busy at her task : one 
word 
Alone she uttered as she paused to die, 
" Silence ! " — then listened even as one 
who heard 
With song and wing the angels drawing 
nigh! 

Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands, 
And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and 
Pain 
Kneel at her feet. Her marble image 
stands 
Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's 
holy fane. 

Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross up- 
rears, 
Wide as the world her story still is told ; 
In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers 
and tears. 
She lives again whose grave is centuries 
old. 

And still, despite the weakness or the blame 
Of blind submission to the blind, she 
hath 
A tender place in hearts of every name, 
And more than Rome owns Saint Eliza- 
beth ! 

A. D. 1780 

Slow ages passed : and lo ! another came, 
An English matron, in whose simple faith 

Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim, 
A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth. 

No sackcloth robe, nor ashen - sprinkled 
hair, 
Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil 
long. 
Marred her calm presence. God had made 
her fair, 
And she could do His goodly work no 
wrong. 

Their yoke is easy and their burden light 
Whose sole confessor is the Christ of 
God; 



THE HOMESTEAD 



^35 



Her quiet trust and faith transcending 

sight 
Smoothed to her feet the difficult paths 
she trod. 

And there she walked, as duty bade her 

go. 
Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun, 
Shamed with her plainness Fashion's gaudy 
show, 
And overcame the world she did not 
shun. 

In Earlhara's bowers, in Plashet's liberal 
hall, 
In the great city's restless crowd and 
din. 
Her ear was open to the Master's call, 
And knew the summons of His voice 
within. 

Tender as mother, beautiful as wife, 

Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime 
she stood 
In modest raiment faultless as her life, 
The type of England's worthiest woman- 
hood ! 

To melt the hearts that harshness turned to 

stone 

The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed. 

And guilt, which only hate and fear had 

known, 

Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ. 

So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went 
She followed, finding every prison cell 

It opened for her sacred as a tent 

Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well. 

And Pride and Fashion felt her strong ap- 
peal, 
And priest and ruler marvelled as they 
saw 
How hand in hand went wisdom with her 
zeal, 
And woman's pity kept the bounds of 
law. 

She rests in God's peace ; but her memory 

stirs 

The air of earth as with an angel's wings, 

And warms and moves the hearts of men 

like hers, 

The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings. 



United now, the Briton and the Hun, 
Each, in her own time, faithful unto 
death. 

Live sister souls ! in name and spirit one, 
Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth ! 



REQUITAL 

As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew 
Nigh to its close, besought all men to 

say 
Whom he had wronged, to whom he then 
should pay 
A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue, 
And, through the silence of his weeping 
friends, 
A strange voice cried : " Thou owest me 

a debt," 
" Allah be praised ! " he answered. 
" Even yet 
He gives me power to make to thee amends. 
O friend ! I thank thee for thy timely 
word." 
So runs the tale. Its lesson all may 

heed. 
For all have sinned in thought, or word, 
or deed. 
Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have 

erred. 
All need forgiveness, all have debts to pay 
Ere the night cometh, while it still is day. 



THE HOMESTEAD 

Against the wooded hills it stands, 
Ghost of a dead home, staring through 

Its broken lights on wasted lands 
Where old-time harvests grew. 

Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn, 
The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie. 

Once rich and rife with golden corn 
And pale green breadths of rye. 

Of healthful herb and flower bereft. 
The garden plot no housewife keeps ; 

Through weeds and tangle only left, 
The snake, its tenant, creeps. 

A lilac spray, still blossom-clad, 

Sways slow before the empty rooms ; 

Beside the rooflless porch a sad 
Pathetic red rose blooms. 



136 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



His track, in mould aud dust of drouth, 
On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves, 

And in the tireless chimney's mouth 
His web the spider weaves. 

The leaning barn, about to fall. 

Resounds no more on husking eves ; 

No cattle low in yard or stall, 
No thresher beats his sheaves. 

So sad, so drear ! It seems almost 

Some haunting Presence makes its sign 

That down yon shadowy lane some ghost 
Might drive his spectral kine ! 

O home so desolate and lorn ! 

Did all thy memories die with thee ? 
Were any wed, were any born, 

Beneath this low roof-tree ? 

Whose axe the wall of forest broke. 

And let the waiting sunshine through ? 

What goodwife sent the earliest smoke 
Up the great chimney flue ? 

Did rustic lovers hither come ? 

Did maidens, swaying back and forth 
In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom, 

Make light their toil with mirth ? 

Did child feet patter on the stair ? 

Did boyhood frolic in the snow ? 
Did gray age, in her elbow chair, 

Knit, rocking to and fro ? 

The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze. 
The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell ; 

Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees 
Keep the home secrets well. 

Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast 
Of sons far ofp who strive and thrive. 

Forgetful that each swarming host 
Must leave an emptier hive ! 

O wanderers from ancestral soil, 

Leave noisome mill and chaff'ering store 

Gird up your loins for sturdier toil, 
And build the home once more ! 

Come back to bayberry-scented slopes. 
And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine ; 

Breathe airs blown over holt and copse 
Sweet with black birch and pine. 



What matter if the gains are small 
That life's essential wants supply ? 

Your homestead's title gives you all 
That idle wealth can buy. 

All that the many-dollared crave. 

The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and 
mart. 
Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you 
have, 
More dear for lack of art. 

Your own sole masters, freedom-willed, 
With none to bid you go or stay, 

Till the old fields your fathers tilled. 
As manly men as they ! 

With skill that spares your toiling hands, 
And chemic aid that science brings. 

Reclaim the waste and outworn lands. 
And reign thereon as kings ! 



HOW THE ROBIN CAME 

AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND 

Happy yomig friends, sit by me, 
Under May's blown apple-tree. 
While these home-birds in and out 
Througli the blossoms flit about. 
Hear a story, strange and old. 
By the wild red Indians told, 
How the robin came to be : 
Once a great chief left his son, — 
Well-beloved, his only one, — 
When the boy was well-nigh grown, 
In the trial-lodge alone. 
Left for tortures long and slow 
Youths like him must undergo. 
Who their pride of manhood test, 
Lacking water, food, and rest. 

Seven days the fast he kept. 

Seven nights he never slept. 

Then the young boy, wrung with pain, 

Weak from nature's overstrain. 

Faltering, moaned a low complaint : 

" Spare me, father, for I faint ! " 

But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, 

Hid his pity in his pride. 

" You shall be a hunter good. 

Knowing never lack of food ; 



BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS 



137 



You shall be a warrior great, 
Wise as fox and strong as bear ; 
Many scalps your belt shall wear, 
If with patient heart you wait 
Bravely till your task is done. 
Better you should starving die 
Than that boy and squaw should cry 
Shame upon your father's sou ! " 

When next morn the sun's first rays 
Glistened on the hemlock sprays, 
Straight that lodge the old chief sought. 
And boiled samp and moose meat 

brought. 
" Rise and eat, my son ! " he said. 
Lo, he found the poor boy dead ! 
As with grief his grave they made, 
And his bow beside him laid. 
Pipe, and kuife, and wampum-braid, 
On the lodge-top overhead, 
Preening smooth its breast of red 
And the brown coat that it wore, 
Sat a bird, unkno\vn before. 
And as if with human tongue, 
"Mourn me not," it said, or sung ; 
" I, a bird, am still your son, 
Happier than if hunter fleet. 
Or a brave, before your feet 
Laying scalps in battle won. 
Friend of man, my song shall cheer 
Lodge and corn-land ; hovering near, 
To each wigwam I shall bring 
Tidings of the coming spring ; 
Every child my voice shall know 
In the moon of melting snow, 
When the maple's red bud swells. 
And the wind-flower lifts its bells. 
As their fond companion 
Men shall henceforth own your son, 
And my song shall testify 
That of human kin am I." 

Thus the Indian legend saith 
How, at first, the robin came 
With a sweeter life than death. 
Bird for boy, and still the same. 
If my young friends doubt that this 
Is the robin's genesis, 
Not in vain is still the myth 
If a truth be found therewith : 
Unto gentleness belong 
Gifts unknown to pride and wrong ; 
Happier far than hate is praise, — 
He who sings than he who slays. 



BANISHED FROM MASSACHU- 
SETTS 

1660 

On a painting by E. A. Abbey. The Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts enacted Oct. 19, 
1658, that " any person or persons of the cursed 
sect of Quakers " should, on conviction of the 
same, be banished, on pain of death, from the 
jurisdiction of the conunonwealth. 

Over the threshold of his pleasant home 
Set in green clearings passed the exiled 

Friend, 
In simple trust, misdoubting not the end. 
" Dear heart of mine ! " he said, " the time 

has come 
To trust the Lord for shelter." One long 
gaze 
The good wife turned on each familiar 

thing, — 
The lowing kine,the orchard blossoming, 
The open door that showed the hearth-fire's 

blaze, — 
And calmly answered, "Yes, He will pro- 
vide." 
Silent and slow they crossed the home- 
stead's bound, 
Lingering the longest by their child's 
* grave-mound. 

" Move on, or stay and hang ! " the sheriff 

cried. 
They left behind them more than home or 

land. 
And set sad faces to an alien strand. 

Safer with winds and waves than human 
wrath, 
With ravening wolves than those whose 

zeal for God 
Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod 
Drear leagues of forest without guide or 

path. 
Or launching frail boats on the imcharted 
sea. 
Round storm-vexed capes, whose teeth of 

granite ground 
The waves to foam, their perilous way 
they wound, 
Enduring all things so their souls were free. 
Oh, true confessors, shaming them who did 
Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fathers 
bore ! 



138 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



For you the Mayflower spread her sail 

once more, 
Freighted with souls, to all that duty bid 
Faithful as they who sought au unknowu 

land. 
O'er wintry seas, from Holland's Hook of 

Sand! 

So from his lost home to the darkening main, 
Bodeful of storm, stout Macy held his 

way, 
And, when the green shore blended with 
the gray, 
His poor wife moaned : " Let us turn back 

again." 
" Nay, woman, weak of faith, kneel down," 
said he, 
" And say thy prayers : the Lord himself 

will steer ; 
And led by Him, nor man nor devils I 
fear ! " 
So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy sea. 
Saw, far and faint, the loom of laud, and 
gave 
With feeble voices thanks for friendly 

ground 
Whereon to rest their weary feet, and 
found 
A peaceful death-bed and a quiet grave 
Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than his 

age. 
The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's 
rage. 

Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely shores. 
And Indian-haunted Narragansett saw 
The way-worn travellers round their 
camp-fire draw. 
Or heard the plashing of their weary oars. 
And every place whereon they rested grew 
Happier for pure and gracious woman- 
hood, 
And men whose names for stainless lionor 
stood. 
Founders of States and rulers wise and true. 
The Muse of liistory yet shall make amends 
To those who freedom, peace, and justice 

taught. 
Beyond their dark age led the van of 
thought. 
And left unforfeited the name of Friends. 
O mother State, how foiled was thy de- 
sign ! 
The gain was theirs, the loss alone was 
thine. 



THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN 

The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's 
Miirchen, Berlin, 1816. The ballad appeared 
first in St. Nicholas, whose young' readers were 
advised, while smiling at the absurd supersti- 
tion, to remember that bad companionship and 
evil habits, desires, and passions are more to 
be dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who 
frightened the children of past ages. 

The pleasant isle of Riigen looks the Baltic 
water o'er, 

To the silver-sanded beaches of the Pom- 
eranian shore ; 

And in the town of Rambiu a little boy and 

maid 
Plucked the meadow-flowers together and 

in the sea-surf played. 

Alike were they in beauty if not in their 
degree : 

He was the Amptman's first-born, the mil- 
ler's child was she. 

Now of old the isle of Riigen was full of 

Dwarfs and Trolls, 
The brown-faced little Earth-men, the 

people without souls ; 

And for every man and woman in Riigen's 

island found 
Walking in air and sunshine, a Troll was 

underground. 

It chanced the little maiden, one morning, 

strolled away 
Among the haunted Nine Hills, where the 

elves and goblins play. 

That day, in barley fields below, the har- 
vesters had known 

Of evil voices in the air, and heard the 
small horns blown. 

She came not back ; the search for her in 

field and wood was vain : 
They cried her east, they cried her west, 

but she came not again. 

" She 's down among the Brown Dwarfs," 
said the dream-wives wise and old, 

And prayers were made, and masses said, 
and Rambin's church bell tolled. 



THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN 



139 



Five years her father mourned her ; and 

then John Deitrich said : 
" I will find my little playmate, be she 

alive or dead." 

He watched among the Nine Hills, he 
heard the Brown Dwarfs sing, 

And saw them dance by moonlight merrily 
in a ring. 

And when their gay-robed leader tossed up 

liis cap of red, 
Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and 

thrust it on his head. 

The Troll came crouching at his feet and 

wept for lack of it. 
" Oh, give me back my magic cap, for your 

great head unfit ! " 

" Nay," Deitrich said ; " the Dwarf who 
thi'ows his charmed cap away, 

Must serve its tinder at his will, and for 
his folly pay. 

" You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and hid her 

in the earth ; 
And you shall ope the door of glass and let 

me lead her forth." 

" She will not come ; she 's one of us ; she 's 
mine ! " the Brown Dwarf said ; 

" The day is set, the cake is baked, to-mor- 
row we shall wed." 

" The fell fiend fetch thee ! " Deitrich cried, 
" and keep thy foul tongue still. 

Quick ! open, to thy evil world, the glass 
door of the hill ! " 

The Dwarf obeyed ; and youth and Troll 
down the long stairway passed. 

And saw in dim and sunless light a country 
strange and vast. 

Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw the 

elfin under-land, — 
Its palaces of precious stones, its streets of 

golden sand. 

He came unto a banquet-hall with tables 

richly spread, 
Where a young maiden served to him the 

red wine and the bread. 



How fair she seemed among the Trolls so 

ugly and so wild ! 
Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one who 

never smiled ! 

Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown hair, 
her tender blue eyes seemed 

Like something he had seen elsewhere or 
something he had dreamed. 

He looked ; he clasped her in his arms ; he 

knew the long-lost one ; 
" O Lisbeth ! See thy playmate — I am the 

Amptman's son ! " 

She leaned her fair head on his breast, and 
through her sobs she spoke : 

" Oh, take me from this evil place, and 
from the elfin folk ! 

" And let me tread the grass-green fields 
and smell the flowers again. 

And feel the soft wind on my cheek and 
hear the dropping rain ! 

"And oh, to hear the singing bird, the 

rustling of tlie tree, 
The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep, the 

voices of the sea ; 

" And oh, upon my father's knee to sit be- 
side the door. 

And hear the bell of vespers ring in Ram- 
bin church once more ! " 

He kissed her cheek, he kissed her lips ; 

the Brown Dwarf groaned to see, 
And tore his tangled hair and ground his 

long teeth angrily. 

But Deitrich said : " For five long years 
this tender Christian maid 

Has served you in your evil world, and well 
must she be paid ! 

" Haste ! — hither bring me precious gems, 

the richest in your store ; 
Then when we pass the gate of glass, you '11 

take your cap once more." 

No choice was left the baffled Troll, and, 

murmuring, he obeyed. 
And filled the pockets of the youth and 

apron of the maid. 



140 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



They left the dreadful under-land and 

passed the gate of glass ; 
They felt the sunshine's warm caress, they 

trod the soft, green grass. 

And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf 
stretch up to the in his brown 

And crooked claw-like fingers, they tossed 
his red cap down. 

Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was never 

sky so blue, 
As hand in hand they homeward walked 

the pleasant meadows through ! 

And never sang the birds so sweet in Ram- 
bin's woods before. 

And never washed the waves so soft along 
the Baltic shore ; 

And when beneath his door-yard trees the 

father met his child, 
The bells rung out their merriest peal, the 

folks with joy ran wild. 



And soon from Rambin's holy church the 
twain came forth as one. 

The Amptman kissed a daughter, the mil- 
ler blest a son. 

John Deitrich's fame went far and wide, 
and nurse and maid crooned o'er 

Their cradle song : " Sleep on, sleep well, 
the Trolls shall come no more ! " 

For in the haunted Nine Hills he set a 

cross of stone ; 
And Elf and Brown Dwarf sought in vain 

a door where door was none. 

The tower he built in Rambin, fair Riigen's 
pride and boast. 

Looked o'er the Baltic water to the Pome- 
ranian coast ; 

And, for his worth ennobled, and rich be- 
yond compare, 

Count Deitrich and his lovely bride dwelt 
long and happy there. 



POEMS OF NATURE 



THE FROST SPIRIT 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 
comes ! You may trace his foot- 
steps now 

On the naked woods and the blasted fields 
and the brown hill's withered brow. 

He has smitten the leaves of the gray old 
trees where their pleasant green 
came forth, 

And the winds, which follow wherever he 
goes, have shaken them down to 
earth. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 

comes ! from the frozen Labrador, 
From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, 

which the white bear wanders o'er, 
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, 

and the luckless forms below 
In the sunless cold of the lingering night 

into marble statues grow ! 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 

comes ! on the rushing Northern 

blast. 
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed 

as his fearfid breath went past. 
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on, 

where the fires of Hecla glow 
On the darkly beautiful sky above and the 

ancient ice below. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 

comes ! and the quiet lake shall feel 
The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and 

ring to the skater's heel ; 
And the streams which danced on the 

broken rocks, or sang to the leaning 

grass. 
Shall bow again to their winter chain, and 

in mournful silence pass. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 
comes ! Let us meet him as we may, 



And turn with the light of the parlor-fire 

his evil power away ; 
And gather closer the circle round, when 

that firelight dances high, 
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend 

as his sounding wing goes by ! 



THE MERRIMAC 

" The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far 
to the south, which they call Merrimac." — 

SlEUR DE MONTS, 1004. 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still 

The sunset rays thy valley fill ; 

Poured slantwise down the long defile. 

Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile. 

1 see the winding Powow fold 

The green hill in its belt of gold, 

And following down its wavy line, 

Its sparkling waters blend with thine. 

There 's not a tree upon thy side. 

Nor rock, which thy returning tide 

As yet hath left abrupt and stark 

Above thy evening water-mark ; 

No calm cove with its rocky hem, 

No isle whose emerald swells begem 

Thy broad, smooth current ; not a sail 

Bowed to the freshening ocean gale ; 

No small boat with its busy oars. 

Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores ; 

Nor farm-house with its maple shade, 

Or rigid poplar colonnade. 

But lies distinct and full in sight. 

Beneath this gush of sunset light. 

Centuries ago, that harbor-bar. 

Stretching its length of foam afar. 

And Salisbury's beach of shining sand. 

And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand, 

Saw the adventurer's tiny sail. 

Flit, stooping from the eastern gale ; 

And o'er these woods and waters broke 

The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, 

As brightly on the voyager's eye, 



142 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Weary of forest, sea, and sky. 

Breaking the dull continuous wood, 

The Merrimac rolled down his Hood ; 

Mingling that clear pellucid brook, 

Which channels vast Agioochook 

When spring-time's sun and shower unlock 

The frozen fountains of the rock, 

And more abundant waters given 

From that pure lake, "The Smile of 

Heaven," 
Tributes from vale and mountain-side, — 
With ocean's dark, eternal tide ! 

On yonder rocky cape, which braves 
The stormy challenge of the waves. 
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, 
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, 
Planting upon the topmost crag 
The staff of England's battle-flag ; 
And, while from out its heavy fold 
Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, 
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, 
And weapons brandishing in air, 
He gave to that lone promontory 
The sweetest name in all his story ; 
Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters. 
Whose harems look on Stamboul's wa- 
ters, — 
Who, when the chance of war had bound 
The Moslem chain his limbs around. 
Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain, 
Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain, 
And fondly to her youthful slave 
A dearer gift than freedom gave. 

But look ! the yellow light no more 
Streams down on wave and verdant shore ; 
And clearly on the calm air swells 
The twilight voice of distant bells. 
From Ocean's bosom, white and thin. 
The mists come slowly rolling in ; 
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, 
Amidst the sea-like vapor swim. 
While yonder lonely coast-light, set 
Within its wave-washed minaret, 
Half quenched, a beamless star and pale, 
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil ! 

Home of my fathers ! — I have stood 
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood : 
Seen simrise rest and sunset fade 
Along his frowning Palisade ; 
Looked down the Appalachian peak 
On Juniata's silver streak ; 
Have seen along his valley gleam 



The Mohawk's softly winding stream ; 
The level light of sunset shine 
Through broad Potomac's hem of pine ; 
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner 
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna ; 
Yet wheresoe'er his step might be. 
Thy wandering child looked back to thee ! 
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound 
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound. 
The unforgotten swell and roar 
Of waves on thy familiar shore ; 
And saw, amidst the curtained gloom 
And quiet of his lonely room, 
Thy sunset scenes before him pass ; 
As, in Agrippa's magic glass. 
The loved and lost arose to view. 
Remembered groves in greenness grew, 
Bathed still in childhood's morning dew, 
Along whose bowers of beauty swejit 
Whatever Memory's mourners wept. 
Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, 
Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept ; 
And while the gazer leaned to trace. 
More near, some dear familiar face, 
He wept to find the vision flown, — 
A phantom and a dream alone ! 



HAMPTON BEACH 

The sunlight glitters keen and bright, 

Where, miles away. 
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight 
A luminous belt, a misty light, 
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of 
sandy gray. 

The tremulous shadow of the Sea ! 

Against its ground 
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree. 
Still as a picture, clear and free. 
With varying outline mark the coast for 
miles around. 

On — on — we tread with loose-flur.g rein 

Our seaward way, 
Through dark-green fields and blossom- 
ing grain. 
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane. 
And bends above our heads the flowering 
locust spray. 

Ha ! like a kind hand on my brow 

Comes this fresh breeze, 
Cooling its dull and feverish glow, 



A DREAM OF SUMMER 



143 



While through my being seems to flow 


What heed I of the dusty land 


The breatli of a new life, the healing of 


And noisy town ? 


the seas ! 


I see the mighty deep expand 




From its white line of glimmering sand 


Now rest we, where this grassy mound 


To where the blue of heaven on bluer 


His feet hath set 


waves shuts down 1 


In the great waters, which have bound 




His granite ankles greenly round 


In listless quietude of mind. 


With long and tangled moss, and weeds 


I yield to all 


with cool spray wet. 


The change of cloud and wave and wind; 




And passive on the flood reclined. 


Good-by to Pain and Care ! I take 


I wander with the waves, and with them 


Mine ease to-day : 


rise and fall. 


Here where these sunny waters break. 




And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 


But look, thou dreamer ! wave and shore 


All burdens from the heart, all weary 


In shadow lie ; 


thoughts away. 


The night-wind warns me back once more 




To where, my native hill-tops o'er. 


I draw a freer breath, I seem 


Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sun- 


Like all I see — 


set sky. 


Waves in the sun, the white-winged 




gleam 


So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell ! 


Of sea-birds in the slanting beam. 


I bear with me 


And far-off sails which flit before the south- 


No token stone nor glittering shell. 


wind free. 


But long and oft shall Memory tell 




Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by 


So when Time's veil shall fall asunder, 


the Sea. 


The soul may know 




No fearful change, nor sudden wonder. 




Nor sink the weight of mystery under, 


A DREAM OF SUMMER 


But with the upward rise, and with tlie 




vastness grow. 


Bland as the morning breath of June 




The southwest breezes play ; 


And all we shrink from now may 


And, through its haze, the winter noon 


seem 


Seems warm as summer's day. 


No new revealing ; 


The snow-plumed Angel of the North 


Familiar as our childhood's stream, 


Has dropped his icy spear ; 


Or pleasant memory of a dream 


Again the mossy earth looks forth, 


The loved and cherished Past upon the 


Again the streams gush clear. 


new life stealing. 






The fox his hillside cell forsakes, 


Serene and mild the untried light 


The muskrat leaves his nook. 


May have its dawning ; 


The bluebird in the meadow brakes 


And, as in summer's northern night 


Is singing with the brook. 


The evening and the dawn unite. 


" Bear up, Mother Nature ! " cry 


The sunset hues of Time blend with the 


Bird, breeze, and streamlet free ; 


soul's new morning. 


" Our winter voices prophesy 




Of summer days to thee ! " 


I sit alone ; in foam and spray 




Wave after wave 


So, in those winters of the soul, 


Breaks on the rocks which, stern and 


By bitter blasts and drear 


gray, 


O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole, 


Shoulder the broken tide away, 


Will sunny days appear. 


Or murmurs hoarse and strong through 


Reviving Hope and Faith, they show 


mossy cleft and cave. 


The soul its living powers, 



144 



POEMS OF NATURE 



And how beneath the winter's snow 
Lie germs of summer flowers ! 

The Night is mother of the Day, 

The Winter of the Spring, 
And ever upon old Decay 

The greenest mosses cling. 
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 

Through showers the sunbeams fall 
For God, who loveth all His works. 

Has left His hope with all ! 



THE LAKESIDE 

The shadows round the inland sea 

Are deepening into night ; 
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee 

They chase the lessening light. 
Tired of the long day's blinding heat, 

I rest my languid eye. 
Lake of the Hills ! where, cool and sweet, 

Thy sunset waters lie ! 

Along the sky, in wavy lines, 

O'er isle and reach and bay. 
Green-belted with eternal pines, 

The mountains stretch away. 
Below, the maple masses sleep 

Where shore with water blends. 
While midway on the tranquil deep 

The evening light descends. 

So seemed it when yon hill's red crown. 

Of old, the Indian trod. 
And, through the sunset air, looked down 

Upon the Smile of God. 
To him of light and shade the laws 

No forest skeptic taught ; 
Their living and eternal Cause 

His truer instinct sought. 

He saw these mountains in the light 

Which now across them shines ; 
This lake, in summer sunset bright, 

Walled round with sombering pines. 
God near him seemed ; from earth and 
skies 

His loving voice he heard. 
As, face to face, in Paradise, 

Man stood before the Lord. 

Thanks, O our Father ! that, like him, 

Thy tender love I see. 
In radiant hill and woodland dim, 



And tinted sunset sea. 
For not in mockery dost Thou fill 

Our earth with light and grace ; 
Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will 

Behind Thy smiling face ! 

AUTUMN THOUGHTS 

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowerSj 
And gone the Summer's pomp and 
show, 

And Autumn, in his leafless bowers, 
Is waiting for the Winter's snow. 

I said to Earth, so cold and gray, 
" An emblem of myself thou art." 

" Not so," the Earth did seem to say, 
" For Spring shall warm my frozen 
heart." 

I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams 
Of warmer sun and softer rain. 

And wait to hear the sound of streams 
And songs of merry birds again. 

But thou, from whom the Spring hath 
gone. 

For whom the flowers no longer blow, 
Who standest blighted and forlorn. 

Like Autumn waiting for the snow ; 

No hope is thine of sunnier hours, 
Thy Winter shall no more depart ; 

No Spring revive thy wasted flowers. 
Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart. 



ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S 
QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR 

All day the darkness and the cold 

Upon my heart have lain. 
Like shadows on the winter sky, 

Like frost upon the pane ; 

But now my torpid fancy wakes, 
And, on thy Eagle's plume. 

Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird. 
Or witch upon her broom ! 

Below me roar the rocking pines. 

Before me spreads the lake 
Whose long and solemn-sounding waves 

Against the sunset break. 



APRIL 



^45 



I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh 

The grain he has not sown ; 
I see, with flashing scythe of fire, 

The prairie harvest mown ! 

I hear the far-off voyager's horn ; 

I see the Yankee's trail, — 
His foot on every mountain-pass, 

On every stream his sail. 

By forest, lake, and waterfall, 

I see his pedler show ; 
The mighty mingling with the mean, 

The lofty with the low. 

He 's whittling by St. Mary's Falls, 

Upon his loaded Avain ; 
He 's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks, 

With eager eyes of gain. 

I hear the mattock in the mine. 

The axe-stroke in the dell. 
The clamor from the Indian lodge, 

The Jesuit chapel bell ! 

I see the swarthy trappers come 

From Mississippi's springs ; 
And war-chiefs with their painted brows. 

And crests of eagle wings. 

Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe. 
The steamer smokes and raves ; 

And city lots are staked for sale 
Above old Indian graves. 

I hear the tread of pioneers 

Of nations yet to be ; 
The first low wash of waves, where soon 

Shall roll a human sea. 

The rudiments of empire here 

Are plastic yet and warm ; 
The chaos of a mighty world 

Is rounding into form ! 

Each rude and jostling fragment soon 
Its fitting place shall find, — 

The raw material of a State, 
Its muscle and its mind ! 

And, westering still, the star which leads 

The New World in its train 
Has tipped with fire the icy spears 

Of many a mountain chain. 



The snowy cones of Oregon 

Are kindling on its way ; 
And California's golden sands 

Gleam brighter in its ray ! 

Then blessings on thy eagle quill, 

As, wandering far and wide, 
I thank thee for this twilight dream 

And Fancy's airy ride 1 

Yet, welcomer than regal plumes, 

Which Western trappers find, 
Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance 
sown, 

Like feathers on the wind. 

Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, 
Whose glistening quill I hold ; 

Thy home the ample air of hope, 
And memory's sunset gold ! 

In thee, let joy with duty join. 

And strength unite with love, 
The eagle's pinions folding round 

The warm heart of the dove ! 

So, when in darkness sleeps the vale 
Where still the blind bird clings, 

The sunshine of the upper sky 
Shall glitter on thy wings ! 

APRIL 

" The spring comes slowly up this way." 
Christabel. 

'T IS the noon of the spring-time, yet never 

a bird 
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is 

heard ; 
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of 

snow, 
And blowing of drifts where the crocus 

should blow ; 
Where wind-flower and violet, amber and 

white. 
On south-sloping brooksides should smile 

in the light, 
O'er the cold winter-beds of their late- 
waking roots 
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal 

shoots ; 
And, longing for light, under wind-driven 

heaps. 



146 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Round the boles of the pme-wood the 

ground-laurel creeps, 
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of 

showers, 
With buds scarcely swelled, which should 

burst into flowers ! 
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the 

south ! 
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss 

of thy mouth ; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from 

God, 
Resurrection and life to the graves of the 

sod ! 
Up our long river-valley, for days, have not 

ceased 
The wail and the shriek of the bitter north- 
east, 
Raw and cliill, as if winnowed through ices 

and snow, 
All the way from the land of the wild Es- 
quimau, 
Until all our dreams of the laud of the blest. 
Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny 

southwest. 
O soul of the spring-time, its light and its 

breath. 
Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to 

tliis death ; 
Renew the great miracle ; let us behold 
The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre 

rolled, 
And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old ! 
Let our faith, which in darkness and cold- 
ness has lain. 
Revive with the warmth and the brightness 

again, 
And in blooming of flower and budding of 

tree 
The symbols and types of our destiny see ; 
The life of the spring-time, the life of the 

whole, 
And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to 

the soul ! 

PICTURES 



Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, 
and o'er all 
Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining 

down 
Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town. 
The freshening meadows, and the hill- 
sides brown ; 



Voice of the west-wind from the hills 
of pine, 
And the brimmed river from its distant fall, 
Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude 
Of bird-songs in the streamlet -skirting": 

wood, — 
Heralds and prophecies of sound and 

sight. 
Blessed forerunners of the warmth and 
light. 
Attendant angels to the house of prayer. 
With reverent footsteps keeping pace 
with mine, — 
Once more, through God's great love, with 

you I share 
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair 

As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, 
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom 
From the dark night and winter of the 
tomb ! 



White with its sun-bleached dust, the path- 
way winds 
Before me ; dust is on the shrunken grass, 
And on the trees beneath whose boughs 

I pass ; 
Frail screen against the Hunter of the 

sky. 
Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, 
While mounting with his dog-star high 
and higher 
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds 

The burnished quiver of his shafts of 
fire. 
Between me and the hot fields of his 

South 
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace- 
mouth. 
Glimmers and swims before my dazzled 
sight. 
As if the burning arrows of his ire 
Broke as they fell, and shattered into 
light ; 
Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind. 
And hear it telling to the orchard trees, 
And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees. 
Tales of fair meadows, green with con- 
stant streams. 
And mountains rising blue and cool behind, 
Where in moist dells the purple orchis 
gleams. 
And starred with white the virgin's bower 

is twined. 
So the o'er wearied pilgrim, as he fares 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 



t47 



Along life's summer waste, at times is 
fanned, 
Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs 
Of a serener and a holier land, 
J'resh as the morn, and as the dewfall 
bland. 
Breath of the blessed Heaven for which 



we pray. 
Blow from the eternal hills 
our earthly way ! 



make glad 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 

LAKE WINXIPESAUKEE 
I. NOON 

White clouds, whose shadows haunt the 

deep, 
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
The simshine on the hills asleep ! 

O isles of calm ! O dark, still wood ! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 
Yon inouutain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, 

And softer lights and airs more bland, 

And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 

Transfused through you, O mountain 

frieuds ! 
With mine your solemn spirit blends. 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

1 read each misty mountain sign, 

I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And I am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 

I lapse into the glad release 

Of Nature's own exceeding peace. 

O welcome calm of heart and mind ! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 

So fall the weary years away ; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 



This western wind hath Lethean powers, 
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers. 
The lake is white with lotus-flowers ! 

Even Duty's voice is faint and low, 

And slumberous Conscience, waking slow, 

Forgets her blotted scroll to show. 

The Shadow which pursues us all. 
Whose ever-nearing steps appall. 
Whose voice we hear behind us call, — 

That Shadow blends with mountain gray, 
It speaks but what the light waves say, — 
Death walks apart from Fear to-day ! 

Rocked on her breast, these pines and I 
Alike on Nature's love rely ; 
And equal seems to live or die. 

Assured that He whose presence fills 
With light the spaces of these hills 
No evil to His creatures wills. 

The simple faith remains, that He 
Will do, whatever that may be. 
The best alike for man and tree. 

What mosses over one shall grow. 
What light and life the other know, 
Unanxious, leaving Him to show. 

II. EVENING 

Yon mountain's side is black with night. 
While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming 
crown 

The moon, slow-roimding into sight. 
On the hushed inland sea looks down. 

How start to light the clustering isles. 
Each silver - hemmed ! How sharply 
show 

The shadows of their rocky piles, 
And tree-tops in the wave below ! 

How far and strange the mountains seem, 
Dim-looming through the pale, still light ! 

The vague, vast grouping of a dream. 
They stretch into the solemn night. 

Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale. 
Hushed by that presence grand and grave, 

Are silent, save the cricket's wail, 
And low response of leaf and wave. 



148 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and Night 
Make rival love, I leave ye soon, 

What time before the eastern light 
The pale ghost of the setting moon 

Shall hide behind yon rocky spines. 

And the young archer, Morn, shall break 

His arrows on the mountain pines, 

And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake ! 

Farewell ! around this smiling b.ay 

Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom. 

With lighter steps than mine, may stray 
In radiant summers yet to come. 

But none shall more regretful leave 
These waters and these hills than I : 

Or, distant, fonder dream how eve 
Or dawn is painting wave and sky ; 

How rising moons shine sad and mild 
On wooded isle and silvering bay ; 

Or setting suns beyond the piled 

And purple mountains lead the day ; 

Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy. 

Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering here. 

Shall add, to life's abounding joy, 

The charmed repose to suffering dear. 

Still waits kind Nature to impart 
Her choicest gifts to such as gain 

An entrance to her loving heart 

Through the sharp discipline of pain. 

Forever from the Hand that takes 
One blessing from us others fall ; 

And, soon or late, our Father makes 
His perfect recompense to all ! 

Oh, watched by Silence and the Night, 
And folded in the strong embrace 

Of the great mountains, with the light 
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, 

Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower 
Of beauty still, and while above 

Thy solemn mountains speak of power, 
Be thou the mirror of God's love. 



THE FRUIT-GIFT 

Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky 
Of sunset faded from our hills and 
streams. 



I sat, vague listening, lapped in twiligh*; 

dreams, 
To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry. 
Then, like that basket, flush with summer 

fruit, 
Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's 

foot. 
Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered 

sweetness. 
Full-orbed, and glowing with the prisoned 

beams 
Of sunaniery suns, and rounded to com- 
pleteness 
By kisses of the south-wind and the dew. 
Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought I 

knew 
The pleasure of the homeward-turning 

Jew, 
When Eshcol's clusters on his shoulders 

lay. 
Dropping their sweetness on his desert way. 



I said, " This fruit beseems no 



I'ld of 



Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise, 
O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the 

price 
Of the great mischief, — an ambrosial 
tree, 
Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in. 

To keep the thorns and thistles company." 
Perchance our frail, sad mother plucked in 
haste 
A single vine-slip as she passed the gate, 
^Miere the dread sword alternate paled 
and burned. 
And the stern angel, pitying her fate, 
Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned 
Aside his face of fire ; and thus the waste 
And fallen world hath yet its annual taste 
Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost. 
And show by one gleaned ear the mighty 
harvest lost. 



FLOWERS IN WINTER 

PAINTED UPON A PORTE LIVRE 

How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 
In graceful counterfeit of flowers, 

These eliildren of the meadows, born 
Of sunshine and of showers ! 

How well the conscious wood retains 
The pictures of its flower-sown home. 



THE MAYFLOWERS 



[49 



The lights and shades, the purple stains, 
And golden hues of bloom ! 

It was a happy thought to bring 
To the dark season's frost and rime 

This painted memory of spring, 
This dream of summer-time. 

Our hearts are lighter for its sake, 
Our fancy's age renews its youth, 

And dim-remembered fictions take 
The guise of present truth. 

A wizard of the Merrimac, — 
So old ancestral legends say, — 

Could call green leaf and blossom back 
To frosted stem and spray. 

The dry logs of the cottage wall. 

Beneath his touch, put out their leaves ; 

The clay-bound swallow, at his call. 
Played round the icy eaves. 

The settler saw his oaken flail 

Take bud, and bloom before his eyes ; 

From frozen pools he saw the pale, 
Sweet summer lilies rise. 

To their old homes, by man profaned, 
Came the sad dryads, exiled long, 

And through their leafy tongues complained 
Of household use and wrong. 

The beechen platter sprouted wild. 
The pipkin wore its old-time green, 

The cradle o'er the sleeping child 
Became a leafy screen. 

Haply our gentle friend hath met. 
While wandering in her sylvan quest. 

Haunting his native woodlands yet. 
That Druid of the West ; 

And, while the dew on leaf and flower 
Glistened in moonlight clear and still. 

Learned the dusk wizard's spell of power. 
And caught his trick of skill. 

But welcome, be it new or old. 

The gift which makes the day more bright. 
And paints, upon the ground of cold 

And darkness, warmth and light ! 

Without is neither gold nor green ; 
Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing ; 



Yet, sunimer-iike, we sit between 
The autumn and the spring. 

The one, with bridal blush of rose, 

And sweetest breath of woodland balm. 

And one whose matron lips unclose 
In smiles of saintly calm. 

Fill soft and deep, O winter snow ! 

The sweet azalea's oaken dells, 
And hide the bank where roses blow, 

And swing the azure bells ! 

O'erlay the amber violet's leaves. 
The purple aster's brookside home, 

Guard all the flowers her pencil gives 
A life beyond their bloom. 

And she, when spring comes round again. 
By greening slope and singing flood 

Shall wander, seeking, not in vain. 
Her darlings of the wood. 



THE MAYFLOWERS 

The trailing arbutvis, or mayflower, grows 
abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and 
was the first flower that gi-eeted the Pilgrims 
after their fearful winter. The name mayjioivet 
was familiar in England, as the application of 
it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied 
by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. 
Its use in New England in connection with 
Ejngoea repens dates from a very early day, 
some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used 
it, in affectionate memory of the vessel and its 
English flower association. 

Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 

And nursed by winter gales. 
With petals of the sleeted spars, 

And leaves of frozen sails ! 

What had she in those dreary hours, 

Within her ice-rimmed bay, 
In common with the wild-wood flowers. 

The first sweet smiles of May ? 

Yet, " God be praised ! " the Pilgrim said. 

Who saw the blossoms peer 
Above the brown leaves, dry and dead, 

" Behold our Mayflower here ! " 

" God wills it : here our rest shall be, 
Our years of wandering o'er ; 



'5° 



POEMS OF NATURE 



For us the Mayflower of the sea 
Shall spread her sails uo more." 

O sacred flowers of faith a.nd hope, 

As sweetly now as then 
Ye hloom on many a birchen slope, 

In many a pine-dark glen. 

Behind the sea-wall's rngged length, 
Unchanged, your leaves unfold, 

Like love behind the manly strength 
Of the brave hearts of old. 

So live the fathers in their sons. 

Their sturdy faith be ours. 
And ours the love that overruns 

Its rocky strength with flowers. 

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day 

Its shadow round us draws ; 
The Mayflower of his stormy bay. 

Our Freedom's struggling cause. 

But warmer suns erelong shall bring 

To life the frozen sod ; 
And through dead leaves of hope shall 
spring 

Afresh the flowers of God ! 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 



O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched 
hands 
Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, 
I see, beyond the valley lands. 

The sea's long level dim with rain. 
Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to come, 
And, for the summer bloom and greenness 

gone, 
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling 
morn atone. 



Along the river's summer walk. 

The withered tufts of asters nod ; 
And trembles on its arid stalk 

The hoar plume of the golden-rod. 
And on a ground of sombre fir. 
And azure-studded juniper. 
The silver birch its buds of purple shows. 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed tlie 
sweet wild-rose ! 



With mingled sound of horns and bells, 

A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, 

Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, 

Like a great arrow through the sky, 
Two dusky lines converged in one. 
Chasing the southward-flying sun ; 
While the brave snow-bird and the hardy 

jay 
Call to them from the pines, as if to bid 
them stay. 



I passed this way a year ago : 

The wind blew south ; the noon of day 
Was warm as June's ; and save that snow 
Flecked the low mountains far away, 
And that the vernal-seeming breeze 
Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, 
I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, 
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft 
wind at play. 



Since then, the winter blasts have piled 

The white pagodas of the snow 
On these rough slopes, and, strong and 
wild. 
Yon river, in its overflow 
Of spring-time rain and sun, set free. 
Crashed with its ices to the sea ; 
And over these gray fields, then green and 

gold. 
The summer corn has waved, the thunder s 
organ rolled. 



Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 

What pomp of rise and shut of day. 
What hues wherewith our Northern clime 

Makes autumn's dropping woodlands 

gay. 

What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells. 
What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits 

and flowers. 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in 
its round been ours ! 



I know not how, in other lands. 

The changing seasons come and go ; 

What splendors fall on Syrian sands, 
What purple lights on Alpine snow ! 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 



Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
On Venice at her watery gates ; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
And the Alhambra's halls are but a travel- 
ler's tale. 



Yet, on life's current, he who drifts 

Is one with him who rows or sails ; 
And he who wanders widest lifts 

No more of beauty's jealous veils 
Than he who from his doorway sees 
The miracle of flowers and trees. 
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, 
And from cloud minarets hears the sunset 
call to prayer ! 



The eye may well be glad that looks 
Where Pharpar's fountains rise and 
fall ; 
But he who sees his native brooks 

Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. 
The marble palaces of Ind 
Rise round him iii the snow and wind ; 
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz 

smiles. 
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his wood- 
land aisles. 



And thus it is my fancy blends 

The near at hand and far and rare ; 
And while the same horizon bends 
Above the silver-sprinkled hair 
Which flashed the light of morning skies 
On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, 
Within its round of sea and sky and field, 
Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos 
stands revealed. 



And thus the sick man on his bed. 

The toiler to his task-work bound, 
Behold their prison-walls outspread, 

Tlieir clipped horizon widen round ! 
While freedom-giving fancy waits, 
Like Peter's angel at the gates, 
The power is theirs to baffle care and pain, 
To bring the lost world back, and make it 
theirs again ! 



What lack of goodly company. 
When masters of the ancient lyre 



Obey my call, and trace for me 

Their words of mingled tears and fire I 
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
I read the world with Pascal's eyes ; 
And priest and sage, with solemn brows 

austere, 
And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of 
Thought, draw near. 



Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say, 

" In vain the human heart we mock ; 
Bring living guests who love the day, 
Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock ! 
The herbs we share with flesh and blood 
Are better than ambrosial food 
With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing 

loath, 
But doubly blest is he who can partake of 
both. 

XIV 

He who might Plato's banquet grace, 

Have I not seen before me sit, 
And watched his puritanic face. 

With more than Eastern wisdom lit ? 
Shrewd mystic ! who, upon the back 
Of his Poor Richard's Almanac 
Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream, 
Links Mann's age of thought to Fulton's 
age of steam ! 



Here too, of answering love secure, 

Have I not welcomed to my hearth 
The gentle pilgrim troubadour. 

Whose songs have girdled half the 
earth ; 
Whose pages, like the magic mat 
Whereon the Eastern lover sat, 
Have borne me over Rhine-laud's purple 

vines. 
And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's 
mountain pines ! 



And he, who to the lettered wealth 

Of ages adds the lore unpriced, 
The wisdom and the moral health. 

The ethics of the school of Christ ; 
The statesman to his holy trust. 
As the Athenian archon, just. 
Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone, 
Has he not graced my home with beauty 
all his own ? 



152 



POEMS OF NATURE 



What greetings smile, what farewells 
wave, 
What loved ones enter and depart ! 
The good, the beautiful, the brave. 
The Heaven-lent treasures of the 
heart ! 
How conscious seems the frozen sod 
And beechen slope whereon they trod ! 
The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass 

bends 
Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent 
friends. 



Then ask not why to these bleak hills 

I cling, as clings the tufted moss. 
To bear the winter's lingering chills. 

The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
I dream of lands where summer smiles, 
And soft winds blow from spicy isles. 
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flow- 
ers be sweet. 
Could I not feel thy soil. New England, at 
my feet ! 



At times I long for gentler skies, 

And bathe in dreams of softer air. 
But homesick tears would fill the eyes 

That saw the Cross without the Bear. 
The pine must whisper to the palm. 
The north-wind break the tropic calm ; 
And with the dreamy languor of the Line, 
The North's keen virtue blend, and strength 
to beauty join. 



Better to stem with heart and hand 
The roaring tide of life, than lie, 
Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
Of God's occasions drifting by 1 
Better with naked nerve to bear 
The needles of this goading air. 
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
The godlike power to do, the godlike aim 
to know. 

XXI 

Home of my heart ! to me more fair 
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls, 

The painted, shingly town-house where 
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls 1 



The simple roof where prayer is made, 
Than Gothic groin and colonnade ; 
The living temple of the heart of man. 
Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many- 
spired Milan ! 



More dear thy equal village schools, 

Where rich and poor the Bible read. 
Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules. 
And Learning wears the chains of 
Creed ; 
Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in 
The scattered sheaves of home and kin. 
Than the mad license ushering Lenten 

pains. 
Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance 
in chains. 



And sweet homes nestle in these dales. 

And perch along these wooded swells ; 
And, blest beyond Arcadian vales. 

They hear the sound of Sabbath bells ! 
Here dwells no perfect man sublime, 
Nor woman winged before her time. 
But with the faults and follies of the race. 
Old home-bred virtues hold their not un- 
honored place. 

XXIV 

Here manhood struggles for the sake 

Of mother, sister, daughter, wife. 
The graces and the loves which make 

The music of the march of life ; 
And woman, in her daily round 
Of duty, walks on holy ground. 
No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here 
Is the bad lesson learned at human rights 
to sneer. 



Then let the icy north-wind blow 

The trumpets of the coming storm. 
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow 

Yon slanting lines of rain transform. 
Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, 
As gayly as I did of old ; 
And I, who watch them through the frosty 

pane, 
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er 
again. 



THE OLD BURYING-GROUND 



t53 



And I will trust that He who heeds 

The life that hides in mead and wold, 
Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads, 

And stains tliese mosses green and gold. 
Will still, as He hath done, incline 
His gracious care to me and mine ; 
Grant what we ask aright,from wrong debar, 
And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter 
every star ! 

XXVII 

I have not seen, I may not see. 

My hopes for man take form in fact. 
But God will give the victory 

In due time ; in that faith I act. 
And he who sees the future sure. 
The baffling present may endure, 
And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand 

that leads 
The heart's desires beyond the halting step 
of deeds. 



And thou, my song, I send thee forth, 
Where harsher songs of mine have 
flown ; 
Go, find a place at home and hearth 

Where'er thy singer's name is known ; 
Revive for him the kindly thought 
Of friends ; and they who love him 
not, 
Touched by some strain of thine, perchance 

may take 
The hand he proffers all, and thank him for 
thy sake. 

THE FIRST FLOWERS 

For ages, on our river borders. 

These tassels in their tawny bloom. 

And willowy studs of downy silver. 
Have prophesied of Spring to come. 

For ages have the»unbound waters 

Smiled on them from their pebbly hem. 

And the clear carol of the robin 

And song of bluebird welcomed them. 

But never yet from smiling river, 
Or song of early bird, have they 

Been greeted witli a gladder welcome 
Than whispers from my heart to-day. 



They break the spell of cold and darkness, 
The weary watch of sleepless pain ; 

And from my heart, as from the river, 
The ice of winter melts again. 

Thanks, Mary ! for this wild-wood token 
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near ; 

Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, 
The growing of the grass I hear. 

It is as if the pine-trees called me 
From ceiled room and silent books, 

To see the dance of woodland shadows, 
And hear the song of April brooks ! 

As in the old Teutonic ballad 
Of Odenwald live bird and tree, 

Together live in bloom and music, 
I blend in song thy flowers and thee. 

Earth's rocky tablets bear forever 

The dint of rain and small bird's track : 

Who knows but that my idle verses 
May leave some trace by Merrimac ! 

The bird that trod the mellow layers 
Of the young earth is sought in vain ; 

The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone, 
From God's design, with threads of rain ! 

So, when this fluid age we live in 

Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, 

Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle 
The savants of the coming time ; 

And, following out their dim suggestions, 
Some idly-curious hand may draw 

My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier 
Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. 

And maidens in the far-off twilights. 

Singing my words to breeze and stream, 

Shall wonder if the old-time Mary 
Were real, or the rhymer's dream ! 



THE OLD BURYING-GROUND 

Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, 
Our hills are maple-crowned ; 

But not from them our fathers chose 
The village burying-ground. 

The dreariest spot in all the land 
To Death they set apart ; 



154 



POEMS OF NATURE 



With scanty grace from Nature's hand, 
And none from that of art. 

A winding wall of mossy stone, 

Frost-flung and broken, lines 
A lonesome acre thinly grown 

With grass and wandering vines. 

Without the wall a birch-tree shows 
Its drooped and tasselled head ; 

Within, a stag-horn sumach grows. 
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. 

There, sheep that graze the neighboring 
plain 

Like white ghosts come and go. 
The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, 

The cow-bell tinkles slow. 

Low moans the river from its bed. 

The distant pines reply ; 
Like mourners shrinking from the dead, 

They stand apart and sigh. 

Unshaded smites the summer sun. 

Unchecked the winter blast ; 
The school-girl learns the place to shun. 

With glances backward cast. 

For thus our fathers testified, 

That he might read who ran, 
The emptiness of human pride, 

The nothingness of man. 

They dared not plant the grave with flow- 
ers, 

Noi: dress the funeral sod. 
Where, with a love as deep as ours. 

They left their dead with God. 

The hard and thorny path they kept 

From beauty turned aside ; 
Nor missed they over those who slept 

The grace to life denied. 

Yet still the wilding flowers would blow, 

The golden leaves would fall. 
The seasons come, the seasons go, 

And God be good to all. 

Above the graves the blackberry hung 
In bloom and green its wreath, 



And harebells swung as if they rung 
The chimes of peace beneath. 

The beauty Nature loves to share, 

The gifts she hath for all. 
The common light, the common air, 

O'ercrept the graveyard's wall. 

It knew the glow of eventide, 

The sunrise and the noon. 
And glorified and sanctified 

It slept beneath the moon. 

With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod. 

Around the seasons ran, 
And evermore the love of God 

Rebuked the fear of man. 

We dwell with fears on either hand 

Within a daily strife, 
And spectral problems waiting stand 

Before the gates of life. 

Tlie doubts we vainly seek to solve. 
The truths we know, are one ; 

The known and nameless stars revolve 
Around the Central Sun. 

And if we reap as we have sown. 

And take the dole we deal. 
The law of pain is love alone, 

The wounding is to heal. 

Unharmed from change to change we glid^ 

We fall as in our dreams ; 
The far-off terror at our side 

A smiling angel seems. 

Secure on God's all-tender heart 

Alike rest great and small ; 
Why fear to lose our little part, 

When He is pledged for all ? 

O fearful heart and troubled brain ! 

Take hope and strength from this, — 
Tliat Nature never hints in vain, 

Nor prophesies amiss. 

Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, 

Her lights and airs are given 
Alike to playground and the grave ; 

And over both is Heaven. 



THE RIVER PATH 



C55 



THE PALM-TREE 

Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, 

On the Lidian Sea, by the isles of balm ? 

Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm ? 

A ship whose keel is of palm beneath. 
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark 

sheath. 
And a rudder of palm it steereth with. 

Branches of palm are its spars and rails, 
Fibres -of palm are its woven sails, 
And the rope is of palm that idly trails ! 

What does the good ship bear so well ? 
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, 
And the milky sap of its inner cell. 

What are its jars, so smooth and fine, 
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and 

wine. 
And the cabbage that ripens under the 

Line? 

Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm ? 
The master, whose cunning and skill could 

charm 
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm. 

In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft, 
From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed, 
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun 
aloft !" 

His dress is woven of palmy strands. 
And he holds a palm -leaf scroll in his 

hands. 
Traced with the Prophet's wise commands ! 

The turban folded about his head 

Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf 

braid. 
And the fan that cools him of palm was 

made. 

Of threads of palm was the carpet spun 
Whereon he kneels when the day is done. 
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as 



To him the palm is a gift divine. 
Wherein all uses of man combine, — 
House, and raiment, and food, and wine I 



And, in the hour of his great release. 
His need of the palm shall only cease 
With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace. 

" Allah il Allah ! " he sings his psalm. 
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ; 
" Thanks to Allah who gives the palm I " 

THE RIVER PATH 

No bird-song floated down the hill, 
The tangled bank below was still ; 

No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 

Tlie dusk of twilight round us grew. 
We felt the falling of the dew ; 

For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

But on the river's farther side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified, — 

A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

With us the damp, the chill, the gloom : 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom ; 

While dark, through willowy vistas seen. 
The river rolled in shade between. 

From out the darkness where we trod, 
We gazed upon those hills of God, 

Whose light seemed not of moon or sun. 
We sjjake not, but our thought was one. 

We paused, as if from that bright shore 
Beckoned our dear ones gone before ; 

And stilled our beating hearts to hear 
The voices lost to mortal ear ! 

Sudden our pathway turned from night ; 
The hills swung open to the light ; 

Through their green gates the sunshine 

showed, 
A long, slant splendor downward flowed. 

Down glade and glen and bank it rolled ; 
It bridged the shaded stream with gold ; 



^56 



POEMS OF NATURE 



And, borne on piers of mist, allied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side ! 

"So," prayed we, "when our feet draw 

near 
The river dark, with mortal fear, 

" And the night cometh chill with dew, 
O Father ! let Thy light break through ! 

" So let the hills of doubt divide, 

So bridge with faith the sunless tide ! 

" So let the eyes that fail on earth 
Ou Thy eternal hills look forth ; 

" And in Thy beckoning angels know 
The dear ones whom we loved below ! " 



MOUNTAIN PICTURES 

I, FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET 

Once more, O Mountains of the North, mi- 
veU 
Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles 
by! 
And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye 
fail. 
Uplift against the blue walls of the sky 
Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine 
weave 
Its golden net-work in your belting woods. 
Smile down in rainbows from your fall- 
ing floods. 
And on your kingly brows at morn and eve 
Set crowns of fire ! So shall my soul 
receive 
Haply the secret of your calm and strength. 
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse 
My common life, your glorious shapes and 

hues 
And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding 

come, 
Loom vast through dreams, and stretch 
in billowy length 
From the sea-level of my lowland home ! 

They rise before me ! Last night's thun- 
der-gust 

Roared not in vain : for where its light- 
nings thrust 

Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem 
so near. 



Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and 

clear, 
I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear. 
The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing 

deer. 
The clouds that shattered ou yon slide-worn 
walls 
And splintered on the rocks their spears 
of rain 
Have set ui play a thousand waterfalls, 
Making the dusk and silence of the woods 
Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods. 
And luminous with blown spray and silver 

gleams. 
While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped 
streams 
Sing to the freshened meadow-lands 
again. 
So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats 
The land with hail and fire may pass away 
With its spent thunders at the break of 
day, 
Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it 
retreats, 
A greener earth and fairer sky behind. 
Blown crystal clear by Freedom's North- 
ern wind ! 

II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET 

I would I were a painter, for the sake 
Of a sweet picture, and of her who led, 
A fitting guide, with reverential tread, 
Into that mountain mystery. First a lake 
Tinted with sunset ; next the wavy lines 
Of far receding hills ; and yet more 
far, 
Monadnock lifting from his night of pines 
His rosy forehead to the evening star. 
Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid 
His head against the West, whose warm 
light made 
His aureole ; and o'er him, sharp and 
clear. 
Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching 
stayed, 
A single level cloud-line, shone upon 
By the fierce glances of the sunken sun. 
Menaced the darkness with its golden 
spear ! 

So twilight deepened round us. Still and 

black 
The great woods climbed the mountain at 

our back : 



THE VANISHERS 



157 



And on their skirts, where yet the lingering 

day 
On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, 
The brown old farm-house like a bird's- 
nest hung. 
With home-life sounds the desert air was 

stirred : 
The bleat of sheep along the hill we 

heard, 
The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet 

well, 
The pasture -bars that clattered as they 

fell; 
Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed ; 

the gate 
Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the mer- 
ry weight 
Of sun-brown children, listening, while 
they swung. 
The welcome sound of supper-call to 

hear ; 
And down the shadowy lane, in tink- 
lings clear. 
The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. 
Thus soothed and pleased, our backwai-d 
path we took. 
Praising the farmer's home. He only 

spake, 
Looking into the sunset o'er the lake. 
Like one to whom the far-off is most 
near : 
"Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant 
look ; 
I love it for my good old mother's sake, 
Who lived and died here in the peace 
of God ! " 
The lesson of his words we pondered 
o'er, 
.'^s silently we turned th.e eastern flank 
Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest 

sank, 
Doubling the night along our rugged road : 
We felt that man was more than his 
abode, — 
The inward life than Nature's raiment 
more ; 
And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill. 
The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed 
and dim 
Before the saintly soul, whose human will 
Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod, 
Making her homely toil and household ways 
An earthly echo of the song of praise 
Swelling from angel lips and harps of 
seraphim. 



THE VANISHERS 

Sweetest of all childlike dreams 

In the simple Indian lore 
Still to me the legend seems 

Of the shapes who flit before. 

Flitting, passing, seen and gone. 
Never reached nor found at rest, 

Baffling search, but beckoning on 
To the Sunset of the Blest. 

From the clefts of mountain rocks. 
Through the dark of lowland firs, 

Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
Of the mystic Vanishers ! 

And the fisher in his skiff, 
And the hunter on the moss. 

Hear their call from cape and cliff. 
See their hands the birch-leaves toss. 

Wistful, longing, through the green 
Twilight of tlae clustered pines, 

In their faces rarely seen 

Beauty more than mortal shines. 

Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
On the slopes of westering knolls ; 

In the wind they whisper low 
Of the Sunset Laud of Souls. 

Doubt who may, O friend of mine ! 

Thou and I have seen them too ; 
On before with beck and sign 

Still they glide, and we pursue. 

More than clouds of purple trail 

In the gold of setting day ; 
]\Iore than gleams of wing or sail 

Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 

Glimpses of immortal youth. 

Gleams and glories seen and flown, 

Far-heard voices sweet with truth. 
Airs from viewless Eden blown ; 

Beauty that eludes our grasp. 

Sweetness that transcends our taste, 

Loving hands we may not clasp, 
Shining feet that mock our haste ; 

Gentle eyes we closed below. 
Tender voices heard once more, 



'58 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Smile and call us, as they go 
On and onward, still before. 

Guided thus, O friend of mine ! 

Let us walk our little way, 
Knowing by each beckoning sign 

That we are not quite astray. 

Chase we still, with baffled feet, 
Smiling eye and waving hand. 

Sought and seeker soon shall meet, 
Lost and found, in Sunset Land ! 



THE PAGEANT 

A SOUND as if from bells of silver. 
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear. 
Through the frost-pictured panes I 
hear. 

A brightness which outshines the morning, 
A splendor brooking no delay. 
Beckons and tempts my feet away. 

I leave the trodden village highway 

For virgin snow -paths glimmering 

through 
A jewelled elm-tree avenue ; 

Where, keen against the walls of sap- 
phire. 
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed, 
Hold up their chandeliers of frost. 

I tread in Orient halls enchanted, 

I dream the Saga's dream of caves 
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves ! 

I walk the land of Eldorado, 

I touch its mimic garden bowers. 

Its silver leaves and diamond flowers ! 

The flora of the mystic mine-world 
Around me lifts on crystal stems 
The petals of its clustered gems ! 

What miracle of weird transforming 

In this wild work of frost and light, 
This glimpse of glory infinite ! 

This foregleam of the Holy City 

Like that to him of Patmos given, 
The wliite bride coming down from 
heaven ! 



How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders, 
Through what sharp-glancing spears of 

reeds 
The brook its muffled water leads ! 

Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, 

Burns unconsumed : a white, cold fire 
Rays out from every grassy spire. 

Each slender rush and spike of mullein, 
Low laurel shrub and drooping fern. 
Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn. 

How yonder Ethiopian hemlock 

Crowned with his glistening circlet 

stands ! 
What jewels light his swarthy hands ! 

Here, where the forest opens southward, 
Between its hospitable pines, 
As through a door, the warm sun shines. 

The jewels loosen on the branches, 

And lightly, as the soft winds blow. 
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. 

And through the clashing of their cymbals 
I hear the old familiar fall 
Of water down the rocky wall, 

Where, from its wintry prison breaking, 
In dark and silence hidden long, 
The brook repeats its summer song. 

One instant flashing in the sunshine. 
Keen as a sabre from its sheath, 
Then lost again the ice beneath. 

I hear the rabbit lightly leaping. 

The foolish screaming of the jay. 
The chopper's axe-stroke far away ; 

The clamor of some neighboring barn., 
yard. 
The lazy cock's belated crow. 
Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow. 

And, as in some enchanted forest 

The lost knight hears his comrades 

sing. 
And, near at hand, their bridles ring, — 

So welcome I these soimds and voices. 

These airs from far-off summer blown. 
This life that leaves me not alone. 



A MYSTERY 



159 



For the white glory overawes me ; 
The crystal terror of the seer 
Of Chebar's vision blinds me here. 

Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven ! 
Thou stainless earth, lay not on me 
Thy keen reproach of purity, 

If, in this august presence-chamber, 

I sigh for summer's leaf-green gloom 
And warm airs thick with odorous 
bloom ! 

Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble, 
And let the loosened tree-boughs swing, 
Till all their bells of silver ring. 

Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime. 
On this chill pageant, melt and move 
The winter's frozen heart with love. 

And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing. 
Breathe through a veil of tenderest 

haze 
Thy prophecy of summer days. 

Come with thy green relief of promise. 
And to this dead, cold splendor bring 
The living jewels of the spring 1 



THE PRESSED GENTIAN 

The time of gifts has come again, 
And, on my northern window-pane. 
Outlined against the day's brief light, 
A Christmas token hangs in sight. 
The wayside travellers, as they pass, 
Mark the gray disk of clouded glass ; 
And the dull blankness seems, perchance, 
Folly to their wise ignorance. 

They cannot from their outlook see 
The perfect grace it hath for me ; 
For there the flower, whose fringes through 
The frosty breath of autumn blew. 
Turns from without its face of bloom 
To the warm tropic of my room. 
As fair as when beside its brook 
The hue of bending skies it took. 

So from the trodden ways of earth. 
Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth, 
And offer to the careless glance 
The clouding gray of circumstance. 



They blossom best where hearth-fires burn. 
To loving eyes alone they turn 
The flowers of inward grace, that hide 
Their beauty from the world outside. 

But deeper meanings come to me. 
My half-immortal flower, from thee ! 
Man judges from a partial view, 
None ever yet his brother knew ; 
The Eternal Eye that sees the whole 
May better read the darkened soul, 
And find, to outward sense denied, 
The flower upon its inmost side ! 

A MYSTERY 

The river hemmed with leaning trees 
Wound through its meadows green ; 

A low, blue line of mountains showed 
The open pines between. 

One sharp, tall peak above them all 

Clear into sunlight sprang : 
I saw the river of my dreams. 

The mountains that I sang ! 

No clue of memory led me on, 

But well the ways I knew ; 
A feeling of familiar things 

With every footstep grew. 

Not otherwise above its crag 

Could lean the blasted pine ; 
Not otherwise the maple hold 

Aloft its red ensign. 

So up the long and shorn foot-hills 
The mountain road shoidd creep ; 

So, green and low, the meadow fold 
Its red-haired kine asleep. 

The river wound as it should wind ; 

Their place the mountains took ; 
The white torn fringes of their clouds 

Wore no unwonted look. 

Yet ne'er before that river's rim 

Was pressed by feet of mine. 
Never before mine eyes had crossed 

That broken mountain line. 

A presence, strange at once and known, 
Walked with me as my guide ; 

The skirts of some forgotten life 
Trailed noiseless at my side. 



/6o 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Was it a dim-remembered dream ? 

Or glimpse through aeons okl ? 
The secret which the mountains kept 

The river never told. 

But from the vision ere it passed 

A tender hope I drew, 
And, pleasant as a dawn of spring, 

The thought witliin me grew, 

That love would temper every change, 

And soften all surprise. 
And, misty with the dreams of earth, 

The hills of Heaven arise. 



A SEA DREAM 

We saw the slow tides go and come. 
The curving surf-lines lightly drawn. 

The gray rocks touched with tender bloom 
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn. 

We saw in richer sunsets lost 

The sombre pomp of showery noons ; 

And signalled spectral sails that crossed 
The weird, low light of rising moons. 

On stormy eves from cliff and head 

We saw the white spray tossed and 
spurned ; 

While over all, in gold and red, 

Its face of fire the lighthouse turned. 

The rail-car brought its daily crowds. 

Half curious, half indifferent. 
Like passing sails or floating clouds, 

We saw them as they came and went. 

But, one calm morning, as we lay 
And watched the mirage-lifted wall 

Of coast, across the dreamy bay, 
And heard afar the curlew call, 

And nearer voices, wild or tame, 
Of airy flock and childish throng. 

Up from the water's edge there came 
Faint snatches of familiar song. 

Careless we heard the singer's choice 
Of old and common airs ; at last 

The tender pathos of his voice 
In one low chanson held us fast. 

A song that mingled joy and pain. 
And memories old and sadly sweet ; 



Wliile, timing to its minor strain, 
The waves in lapsing cadence beat. 



The waves are glad in breeze and sun j 
The rocks are fringed with foam ; 

I walk once more a haunted shore, 
A stranger, yet at home, 
A land of dreams I roam. 

Is this the wind, the soft sea-wind 
That stirred thy locks of brown ? 

Ai'e these the rocks whose mosses knew 
The trail of thy light gown, 
Where boy and gii"l sat down ? 

I see the gray fort's broken wall, 
The boats that rock below ; 

And, out at sea, the passing sails 
We saw so long ago 
Rose-red in morning's glow. 

The freshness of the early time 

On every breeze is blown ; 
As glad the sea, as blue the sky, — 

The change is ours alone ; 

The saddest is my own. 

A stranger now, a world-worn man, 

Is he who bears my name ; 
But thou, methinks, whose mortal life 

Immortal youth became. 

Art evermore the same. 

Thou art not here, thou art not there, 
Thy place I cannot see ; 

I only know that where thou art 
The blessed angels be. 
And heaven is glad for thee. 

Forgive me if the evil years 
Have left on me their sign ; 

Wash out, O soul so beautiful, 
The many stains of mine 
In tears of love divine ! 

I could not look on thee and live. 

If thou wert by my side ; 
The vision of a shining one. 

The white and heavenly bride, 

Is well to me denied. 

But turn to me thy dear girl-face 
Without the angel's crown. 



SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP 



l6! 



The wedded roses of thy lips, 
Thy loose hair rippling down 
lu waves of golden brown. 

Look forth once more through space and 
time, 

And let thy sweet shade fall 
In tenderest grace of soul and form 

On memory's frescoed wall, 

A shadow, and yet all ! 

Draw near, more near, forever dear ! 

Where'er I rest or roam, 
Or in the city's crowded streets, 

Or by the blown sea foam. 

The thought of thee is home ! 

At breakfast hour the singer read 
The city news, with comment wise, 

Like one who felt the pulse of trade 
Beneath his finger fall and rise. 

His look, his air, his curt speech, told 
The man of action, not of books. 

To whom the corners made in gold 

And stocks were more than seaside nooks. 

Of life beneath the life confessed 
His song had hinted unawares ; 

Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed. 
Of human hearts in bulls and bears. 

But eyes in vain were turned to watch 
That face so hard and shrewd and strong ; 

And ears in vain grew sharp to catch 
The meaning of that morning song. 

In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought 
To sound him, leaving as she came ; 

Her baited album only caught 
A common, uuromantic name. 

No word betrayed the mystery fine. 
That trembled on the singer's tongue ; 

He came and went, and left no sign 
Behind him save the song he sung. 



HAZEL BLOSSOMS 

The summer warmth has left the sky, 
The summer songs have died away ; 

And, withered, in the footpaths lie 
The fallen leaves, but yesterday 
With ruby and with topaz gay. 



The grass is browning on the hills ; 
No pale, belated flowers recall 

The astral fringes of the rills, 
And drearily the dead vines fall, 
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall 

Yet through the gray and sombre wood, 
Against the dusk of fir and pine. 

Last of their floral sisterhood, 

The hazel's yellow blossoms shine. 
The tawny gold of Afric's mine ! 

Small beauty hath my unsung flower, 
For spring to own or summer hail ; 

But, in the season's saddest hour. 

To skies that weep and winds that wail 
Its glad surprisals never fail. 

O days grown cold ! O life grown old ! 
No rose of June may bloom again ; 

But, like the hazel's twisted gold, 
I'hrough early frost and latter rain 
Shall hints of summer-time remain. 

And as within the hazel's bough 
A gift of mystic virtue dwells, 

That points to golden ores below. 
And in dry desert places tells 
Where flow unseen the cool, sweet 
wells, — 

So, in the wise Diviner's hand. 
Be mine the hazel's grateful part 

To feel, beneath a thirsty land. 
The living waters thrill and start, 
The beating of the rivulet's heart ! 

Sufficcth me the gift to light 
With latest bloom the dark, cold days ; 

To call some hidden spring to sight 
That, in these dry and dusty ways. 
Shall sing its pleasant song of praise. 

Love ! the hazel- wand may fail, 
But thou canst lend the surer spell, 

That, passing over Baca's vale. 
Repeats the old-time miracle. 
And makes the desert-land a well. 



SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP 

A GOLD fringe on the purpling hem 

Of hills the river runs. 
As down its long, green valley falls 



l62 



POEMS OF NATURE 



The last of summer's suns. 
Along its tawuy gravel-bed 

Broad-flowiug, swift, and still, 
As if its meadow levels felt 

The hurry of the hill, 
Noiseless between its banks of green 

From curve to curve it slips ; 
The drowsy maple-shadows rest 

Like fingers on its lips. 

A waif from Carroll's wildest hills, 

Unstoried and unknown ; 
The ursine legend of its name 

Prowls on its banks alone. 
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn 

As ever Yarrow knew. 
Or, under rainy Irish skies, 

By Spenser's Mulla grew ; 
And through the gaps of leaning trees 

Its mountain cradle shows : 
The gold against the amethyst, 

The green against the rose. » 

Touched by a light that hath no name, 

A glory never sung. 
Aloft on sky and mountain wall 

Are God's great pictures hung. 
How changed the summits vast and old ! 

No longer granite-browed, 
They melt in rosy mist ; the rock 

Is softer than the cloud ; 
The valley holds its breath ; no leaf 

Of all its elms is twirled : 
The silence of eternity 

Seems falling on the world. 

The pause before the breaking seals 

Of mystery is this ; 
Yon miracle-play of night and day 

Makes dumb its witnesses. 
What unseen altar crowns the hills 

That reach up stair on stair ? 
What eyes look through, what white wings 
fan 

These purple veils of air ? 
What Presence from the heavenly heights 

To those of earth stoops down ? 
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods 

On Ida's snowy crown I 

Slow fades the vision of the sky, 

The golden water pales, 
And over all the valley-land 

A gray-winged vapor sails. 
T go the common way of all ; 



The sunset fires will burn. 
The flowers will blow, the river flow, 

When I no more return. 
No whisper from the mountain pine 

Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
The stranger, treading where I tread, 

Of him who loved them well. 

But beauty seen is never lost, 

God's colors all are fast ; 
The glory of this sunset heaven 

Into my soul has passed, 
A sense of gladness unconfined 

To mortal date or clime ; 
As the soul liveth, it shall live 

Beyond the years of time. 
Beside the mystic asphodels 

Shall bloom the home-born flowers. 
And new horizons flush and glow 

With sunset hues of ours. 

Farewell ! these smiling hills must wear 

Too soon their wintry frown. 
And snow-cold winds from off them shake 

The maple's red leaves down. 
But I shall see a summer sun 

Still setting broad and low ; 
The mountam slopes shall blush and bloom, 

The golden water flow. 
A lover's claim is mine on all 

I see to have and hold, — 
The rose-light of perpetual hiUs, 

And sunsets never cold ! 



THE SEEKING OF THE WATER- 
FALL 

They left their home of summer ease 
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees, 
To seek, by ways unknown to all, 
The promise of the waterfall. 

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale 
Had crept — perchance a hunter's tale — 
Of its wild mirth of waters lost 
On the dark woods thi'ough which it tossed. 

Somewhere it laughed and sang ; some- 
where 
Whirled in mad dance its misty hair ; 
But who had raised its veil, or seen 
The rainbow skirts of that Undine ? 

They sought it where the mountain brook 
Its swift way to the valley took ; 



THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL 



163 



Along the rugged slope they clomb, 
Their guide a thread of sound and foam. 

Height after height they slowly won ; 
The fiery javelins of the sun 
Smote the bare ledge ; the tangled shade 
With rock and vine their steps delayed. 

But, through leaf-openings, now and then 
They saw the cheerful homes of men, 
And the great mountains with their wall 
Of misty purple girdling all. 

The leaves through which the glad winds 

blew 
Shared the wild dance the waters knew ; 
And where the shadows deepest fell 
The v/ood-thrush rang his silver bell. 

Fringing the stream, at every turn 
Swung low the waving fronds of fern ; 
From stony cleft and mossy sod 
Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod. 

And still the water sang the sweet, 
Glad song that stirred its gliding feet, 
And found in rock and root the keys 
Of its beguiling melodies. 

Beyond, above, its signals flew 
Of tossing foam the birch-trees through ; 
Now seen, now lost, but baffling still 
The weary seekers' slackening will. 

Each called to each : " Lo here ! Lo 

there ! 
Its white scarf flutters in the air ! " 
They climbed anew ; the vision fled, 
To beckon higher overhead. 

So toiled they up the mountain-slope 
With faint and ever fainter hope ; 
With faint and fainter voice the brook 
Still bade them listen, pause, and look. 

Meanwhile below the day was done ; 
Above the tall peaks saw the sun 
Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set 
Behind the hills of violet. 

" Here ends our quest ! ' ' the seekers 

cried, 
" The brook and rumor both have lied ! 
The phantom of a waterfall 
Has led us at its beck and call." 



But one, with years grown wiser, said : 
" So, always baffled, not misled. 
We follow where before us runs 
The vision of the shining ones. 

" Not where they seem their signals fly, 
Their voices while we listen die ; 
We cannot keep, however fleet, 
The quick time of their winged feet. 

" From youth to age unresting stray 
These kindly mockers in our way ; 
Yet lead they not, the baffling elves, 
To something better than themselves ? 

"Here, though unreached the goal we 

sought, 
Its own reward our toil has brought : 
The winding water's sounding rush, 
The long note of the hermit thrush, 

" The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond 
And river track, and, vast, beyond 
Broad meadows belted round with pines, 
The grand uplift of mountain lines I 

" What matter though we seek with pain 
The garden of the gods in vain. 
If lured thereby we climb to greet 
Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet ? 

" To seek is better than to gain, 
The fond hope dies as we attain ; 
Life's fairest things are those which seem. 
The best is that of which we dream. 

" Then let us trust our waterfall 
Still flashes down its rocky wall, 
With rainbow crescent curved across 
Its sunlit spray from moss to moss. 

" And we, forgetful of our pain. 
In thought shall seek it oft again ; 
Shall see this aster-blossomed sod, 
This sunshine of the golden-rod, 

" And haply gain, through parting boughs. 
Grand glimpses of great mountain brows 
Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen 
Of lakes deep set in valleys green. 

" So failure wins ; the consequence 
Of loss becomes its recompense ; 
And evermore the end shall tell 
The unreached ideal guided well, 



i64 



POEMS OF NATURE 



" Our sweet illusions only die 
Fulfilling love's sure prophecy ; 
And every wish for better things 
An undreamed beauty nearer brings. 

" For fate is servitor of love ; 
Desire and hope and longing prove 
The secret of immortal youth, 
And Nature cheats us into truth. 

" O kind allurers, wisely sent, 
Beguiling with benign intent. 
Still move us, through divine unrest. 
To seek the loveliest and the best ! 

" Go with us when our souls go free, 
And, in the clear, white light to be, 
Add unto Heaven's beatitude 
The old delight of seeking good ! " 



THE TRAILING ARBUTUS 

I WANDERED lonely where the pine-trees 

made 
Against the bitter East their barricade. 

And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell. 
The trailing spring flower tinted like a 
shell 
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my 
feet. 

From under dead boughs, for whose loss 

the pines 
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming 

vines 
Lifted their glad surprise. 
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless 

trees 
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze. 
And snow-drifts lingered under April 

skies. 

As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, 
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and 
pent. 
Which yet find room, 
Through care and cumber, coldness and 

decay, 
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day. 
And make the sad earth happier for their 
bloom. 



ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 



This name in some parts of Europe is given 
to the season we call Indian Summer, in honor 
of the good St. Martin. The title of the poem 
was suggested by the fact that the day it refers 
to was the exact date of that set apart to the 
Saint, the 11th of November. 

Though flowers have perished at the touch 

Of Frost, the early comer, 
I hail the season loved so much, 

The good St. Martin's summer. 

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn, 
And thin moon curving o'er it ! 

The old year's darling, latest born. 
More loved than all before it ! 

How flamed the sunrise through the pines! 

How stretched the birchen shadows, 
Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines 

The westward sloping meadows ! 

The sweet day, opening as a flower 

Unfolds its petals tender. 
Renews for us at noontide's hour 

The summer's tempered splendor. 

The birds are hushed ; alone the wind, 
That through the woodland searches. 

The red-oak's lingering leaves can find, 
And yellow plumes of larches. 

But still the balsam-breathing pine 

Invites no thought of sorrow. 
No hint of loss from air like wine 

The earth's content can borrow. 

The summer and the winter here 

Midway a truce are holding, 
A soft, consenting atmosphere 

Their tents of peace enfolding. 

The silent woods, the lonely hills. 
Rise solemn in their gladness ; 

The quiet that the valley fills 
Is scarcely joy or sadness. 

How strange ! The autumn yesterday 
In winter's grasp seemed dying ; 

On whirling winds from skies of gray 
The early snow was flyiug. 



A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE 



i6s 



Aud now, while over Nature's mood 
There steals a soft releiitmg, 

I will uot mar the present good, 
Forecasting or lamenting. 

My autumn time and Nature's hold 
A dreamy tryst together, 

Aud, both grown old, about us fold 
The tjolden-tissued weather. 



I lean my heart against the day 
To feel its bland caressing ; 

I will not let it pass away 
Before it leaves its blessing. 

God's angels come not as of old 
The Syrian shepherds knew them ; 

In reddening dawns, in sunset gold. 
And warm noon lights I view them. 

Nor need there is, in times like this 
When heaven to earth draws nearer, 

Of wing or song as witnesses 
To make their presence clearer. 

O stream of life, whose swifter flow 

Is of the end forewarning, 
Methinks thy sundown afterglow 

Seems less of night than morning ! 

Old cares grow light ; aside I lay 
The doubts and fears that troubled ; 

The quiet of the happy day 
Within my soul is doubled. 

That clouds must veil this fair sunshine 

Not less a joy I find it ; 
Nor less yon warm horizon line 

That winter lurks behind it. 

The mystery of the untried days 
I close my eyes from reading ; 

His will be done whose darkest ways 
To light and life are leading ! 

Less drear the winter night shall be. 
If memory cheer and hearten 

Its heayy hours with thoughts of thee, 
Sweet summer of St. Martin ! 



STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM 

CLOUD, like that the old-time Hebrew saw 
On Carmel prophesying rain, began 



To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan, 
Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw 

Of chill wind menaced ; then a strong blast 
beat 
Down the long valley's murmuring pines, 

and woke 
The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and 
broke 
Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' 
feet. 

Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness 
swept 
Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam 

range ; 
A wraith of tempest, wonderful and 
strange. 
From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped. 

One moment, as if challenging the storm, 
Chocorvia's tall, defiant sentinel 
Looked from his watch-tower ; then the 
shadow fell. 

And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form. 

And over all the still unhidden sun. 

Weaving its light through slant-blown 

veils of rain. 
Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on 
pain; 
And, when the tumult and the strife were 
done. 

With one foot on the lake, and one on land. 
Framing within his crescent's tinted streak 
A far-off picture of the Melvin peak, 

Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel 
spanned. 



A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE 

To kneel before some saintly shrine. 
To breathe the health of airs divine. 
Or bathe where sacred rivers flow. 
The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go. 
I too, a palmer, take, as they 
With staff and scallop-shell, my way 
To feel, from burdening cares and ilia, 
The strong uplifting of the hills. 

The years are many since, at first, 
For dreamed-of wonders all athirst, 
I saw on Winnipesaukee fall 



[66 



POEMS OF NATURE 



The shadow of the mountain wall. 
Ah ! where are they who sailed with me 
The beautiful island-studded sea ? 
And am I he whose keen surprise 
Flashed out from such unclouded eyes ? 

Still, when the sun of summer burns, 
My longing for the hills returns ; 
And northward, leaving at my back 
The warm vale of the Merrimac, 
I go to meet the winds of morn, 
Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born, 
Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy 
The hunger of a lowland eye. 

Again I see the day decline 
Along a ridged horizon line ; 
Touching the hill-tops, as a nun 
Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun. 
One lake lies golden, which shall soon 
Be silver in the rising moon ; 
And one, the crimson of the skies 
And mountain purple multiplies. 

With the untroubled quiet blends 
The distance-softened voice of friends ; 
The girl's light laugh no discord brings 
To the low song the pine-tree sings ; 
And, not unwelcome, comes the hail 
Of boyhood from his nearing sail. 
The human presence breaks no spell, 
And sunset still is miracle ! 

Calm as the hour, raethinks I feel 

A sense of worship o'er me steal ; 

Not that of satyr-charming Pan, 

No cult of Nature shaming man. 

Not Beauty's self, but that which lives 

Ajid shines through all tlie veils it weaves, — 

Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood. 

Their witness to tlie Eternal Good ! 

And if, by fond illusion, here 

The earth to heaven seems drawing near. 

And yon outlying range invites 

To other and serener heights. 

Scarce hid behind its topmost swell. 

The shining Mounts Delectable ! 

A dream may hint of truth no less 

Than the sharp light of wakefulness. 

As througU her veil of incense smoke 
Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke, 
More than her heathen oracle, 
May not this trance of sunset tell 



That Nature's forms of loveliness 
Their heavenly archetypes confess, 
Fashioned like Israel's ark alone 
From patterns in the Mount made known ? 

A holier beauty overbroods 
These fair and faint similitudes ; 
Yet not imblest is he who sees 
Shadows of God's realities. 
And knows beyond this masquerade 
Of shape and color, light and shade, 
And dawn and set, and wax and wane, 
Eternal verities remain. 

O gems of sapphire, granite set ! 

hills that charmed horizons fret ! 

1 know how fair your morns can break, 
In rosy light on isle and lake ; 

How over wooded slopes can run 
The noonday play of cloud and sun, 
And evening droop her oriflamme 
Of gold and red in still Asquam. 

The summer moons may round again, 
And careless feet these hills profane ; 
These sunsets waste on vacant eyes 
The lavish splendor of the skies ; 
Fashion and folly, misplaced here, 
Sigh for their natural atmosphere, 
And travelled pride the outlook scorn 
Of lesser heights than Matterhorn : 

But let me dream that hill and sky 
Of unseen beauty prophesy ; 
And in these tinted lakes behold 
The trailing of the raiment fold 
Of that which, still eluding gaze, 
Allures to upward-tending ways, 
Whoste footprints make, wherever found, 
Our conmaon earth a holy ground. 

SWEET FERN 

The subtle power in perfume found 
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned ; 

On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound 
No censer idly burned. 

That power the old-time worships knew. 
The Corybantes' frenzied dance. 

The Pythian priestess swooning through 
The wonderland of trance. 

And Nature holds, in wood and field. 
Her thousand sunlit censers still ; 



THE WOOD GIANT 



t6^ 



To spells of flower and shrub we yield 
Against or with our will. 

I climbed a hill path strange and new 
With slow feet, pausing at each turn ; 

A sudden waft of west wind blew 
The breath of the sweet fern. 

That fragrance from my vision swept 
The alien landscape ; in its stead, 

Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, 
As light of heart as tread. 

I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine 

Once more through rifts of woodland 
shade ; 

I knew my river's winding line 
By morning mist betrayed. 

With me June's freshness, lapsing brook. 
Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call 

Of birds, and one Lu voice and look 
In keeping with them all. 

A fern beside the way we went 

She plucked, and, smiling, held it up. 

While from her hand the wild, sweet 
scent 
I drank as from a cup. 

O potent witchery of smell ! 

The dust-dry leaves to life return. 
And she who plucked them owns the spell 

And lifts her ghostly fern. 

Or sense or spirit ? Who shall say 

What touch the chord of memory thrills ? 

It passed, and left the August day 
Ablaze on lonely hills. 



THE WOOD GIANT 

[Written at Sturtevant's Farm, about a mile 
from Centre Harbor, N. H.] 

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, 

From Mad to Saco river, 
For patriarchs of the primal wood 

We sought with vain endeavor. 

And then we said : " The giants old 

Are lost beyond retrieval ; 
This pygmy growth the axe has spared 

Is not the wood primeval. 



" Look where we wUl o'er vale and hill, 

How idle are our searches 
For broad - girthed maples, wide - limbed 
oaks. 

Centennial pines and birches ! 

" Their tortured limbs the axe and saw 
Have changed to beams and trestles ; 

They rest in walls, they float on seas, 
They rot in sunken vessels. 

" This shorn and wasted mountain land 
Of underbrush and boulder, — 

Who thinks to see its full-grown tree 
Must live a century older." 

At last to us a woodland path, 

To open sunset leading. 
Revealed the Anakim of pines 

Our wildest wish exceeding. 

Alone, the level sun before ; 

Below, the lake's green islands ; 
Beyond, in misty distance dim, 

The rugged Northern Highlands. 

Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill 
Of time and change defiant ! 
How dwarfed the common woodland 



and 



Before the old-time giant ! 

What marvel that, in simpler days 
Of the world's early childhood. 

Men croNvned with garlands, gifts, 
praise 
Such monarchs of the wild-wood ? 



That Tyrian maids with flower and song 
Danced through the hill grove's spaces. 

And hoary-bearded Druids foimd 
In woods their holy places ? 

With somewhat of that Pagan awe 
With Christian reverence blending, 

We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms 
Above our heads extending. 

We heard his needles' mystic rune, 

Now rising, and now dying, 
As erst Dodona's priestess heard 

The oak leaves prophesying. 

Was it the half-unconscious moan 
Of one apart and mateless, 



1 63 



POEMS OF NATURE 



The weariness of unshared power, 


Singing a pleasant song of summer still, 


The loneliness of greatness ? 


A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines. 


dawns and sunsets, lend to him 


Hushed the bird -voices and the hmn of 


Your beauty and your wonder ! 


bees, _ 


Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song 


In the thin grass the crickets pipe no 


His solemn shadow under ! 


more ; 




But still the squirrel hoards his winter 


Play lightly on his slender keys, 


store. 


wind of summer, waking 


And drops his nut-shells from the shag- 


For hills like these the sound of seas 


bark trees. 


Ou far-off beaches breaking ! 






Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper : 


And let the eagle and the crow 


high 


Find shelter in his branches, 


Above, the spires of yellowing larches 


When winds sliake down his winter snow 


show. 


In silver avalanches. 


Where the woodpecker and home-loving 


The brave are braver for their cheer, 


crow 
And iay and nut - hatch winter's threat 


The sti'ongest need assurance. 


defy. 


The sigh of longing makes not less 




The lesson of endurance. 


gracious beauty, ever new and old ! 
sights and sounds of nature, doubly 

dear 
When the low sunshine warns the closing 




A DAY 


Talk not of sad November, when a day 


year 
Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic 


Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of 


cold ! 


noon. 
And a wind, borrowed from some morn 


Close to my heart I fold each lovely 


of June, 


thing 


Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless 


The sweet day yields ; and, not disconso- 


spray. 


late. 




With the calm patience of the woods I 


On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines 


wait 


Lay their long shafts of shadow : the 


For leaf and blossom when God gives us 


small rill. 


Spring ! 



PERSONAL POEMS 



A LAMENT 

" The parted spirit, 
Knoweth it not our eorrow ? Answereth not 
Its blessing to our tears ? " 

The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken, 
One bud from the tree of our friendship is 

shaken ; 
One heart from among us no longer shall 

thrill 
With joy in our gladness, or grief in our 

ill. 

Weep ! lonely and lowly are slimibering 

now 
The light of her glances, the pride of her 

brow ; 
Weep ! sadly and long shall we listen in 

vain 
To hear the soft tones of her welcome again. 

Give our tears to the dead ! For human- 
ity's claim 

From its silence and darkness is ever the 
same ; 

The hope of that world whosp existence is 
bliss 

May not stifle the tears of the mourners of 
this. 

For, oh ! if one glance the freed spirit can 
throw 

On the scene of its troubled probation be- 
low. 

Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of 
the dead, 

To that glance will be dearer the tears which 
we shed. 

Oh, who can forget the mild light of her 
smile, 

Over lips moved with music and feeling the 
while. 

The eye's deep enchantment, dark, dream- 
like, and clear, 

In the glow of its gladness, the shade of its 
tear. 



And the charm of her features, while over 
the whole 

Played the hues of the heart and the sun- 
shine of soul ; 

And the tones of her voice, like the music 
which seems 

Murmured low in our ears by the Angel of 
dre 



But holier and dearer our memories hold 
Those treasures of feeling, more precious 

than gold, 
The love and the kindness and pity which 

gave 
Fresh flowers for the bridal, green wreaths 

for the grave ! 

The heart ever open to Charity's claim, 
Unmoved from its purpose by censure and 

blame, 
While vainly alike on her eye and her ear 
Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting 

and jeer. 

How true to our hearts was that beautiful 

sleeper ! 
With smiles for the joyful, with tears for 

the weeper ! 
Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful 

or gay. 
With warnings in love to the passing astray. 

For, though spotless herself, she could sor- 
row for them 

Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem ; 

And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove. 

And the sting of reproof was still tempered 
by love. 

As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in 

heaven. 
As a star that is lost when the daylight is 

given, 
As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens 

in bliss, 
She hath passed to the world of the holy 

from this. 



X69 



T70 



PERSONAL POEMS 



TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES 
B. STORRS 

Late President of Western Reserve College, 
who died at his post of duty, overworn hy his 
strenuous labors with tongue and pen in the 
cause of Human Freedom. 

Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 

Thou martyr of the Lord ! 
With thy last breath crying " Onward ! " 

And thy hand upon the sword. 
The haughty heart derideth, 

And the sinful lip reviles, 
But the blessing of the perishing 

Around thy pillow smiles ! 

When to our cup of trembling 

The added drop is given, 
And the long-suspended thunder 

Falls terribly from Heaven, — 
When a new and feariul freedom 

Is proffered of the Lord 
To the slow-consuming Famine, 

The Pestilence and Sword ! 

When the refuges of Falsehood 

Shall be swept away in wrath. 
And the temple sliall be shaken, 

With its idol, to the earth, 
Shall not thy words of warning 

Be all remembered then ? 
And thy now unheeded message 

Burn in the hearts of men ? 

Oppression's hand may scatter 

Its nettles on thy tomb. 
And even Christian bosoms 

Deny thy memoi-y room ; 
For lying lips shall torture 

Thy mercy into crime. 
And the slanderer shall flourish 

As the bay-tree for a time. 

But where the south-wind lingers 

On Carolina's pines. 
Or falls the careless sunbeam 

Down Georgia's golden mines ; 
Where now beneath his burthen 

The toiling slave is driven ; 
Where now a tyrant's mockery 

Is offered unto Heaven ; 

Where Mammon hath its altars 
Wet o'er with human blood. 



And pride and lust debases 
The workmanship of God, — 

There shall thy praise be spoken, 
Redeemed from Falsehood's ban, 

When the fetters shall be broken, 
And the slave shall be a man ! 

Joy to thy spirit, brother ! 

A thousand hearts are warm, 
A thousand kindred bosoms 

Are baring to the storm. 
What though red-handed Violence 

With secret Fraud combine ? 
The wall of fire is round us. 

Our Present Help was thine. 

Lo, the waking up of nations. 

From Slavery's fatal sleep ; 
The murmur of a Universe, 

Deep calling unto Deep ! 
Joy to thy spirit, brother ! 

On every wind of heaven 
The onward cheer and summons 

Of Freedom's voice is given ! 

Glory to God forever ! 

Beyond the despot's will 
The soul of Freedom liveth 

Imperishable still. 
The words which thou hast uttered 

Are of that soul a part. 
And the good seed tliou hast scattered 

Is springing from the heart. 

In the evil days before us. 

And the trials yet to come. 
In the shadow of the prison. 

Or the cruel martyrdom, — 
We will think of thee, O brother I 

And thy sainted name shall be 
In the blessing of the captive, 

And the anthem of the free. 



LINES 

ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY, 
SECRETARY OF THE BOSTON YOUNG 
men's anti-slavery SOCIETY 

Gone before us, O our brother, 

To the spirit-land ! 
Vainly look we for another 

In thy place to stand. 
W^ho shall oflfer youth and beauty 



TO 



171 



On the wasting shrine 


Be thy virtues with the living, 


Of a stern and lofty duty, 


And thy spirit ours ! 


With a faith like thine ? 




Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting 


TO 


Who again shall see ? 




Who amidst the solemn meeting 


WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN's JOURNAL 


Gaze again on thee ? 




Who, when peril gathers o'er us, 


"Get the writings of John Woolman by 


Wear so calm a brow ? 


heart." — Essays ofElia. 


Who, with evil men before us, 




So serene as thou ? 


Maiden ! with the fair brown tresses 




Shading o'er thy dreamy eye, 


Early hath the spoiler found thee, 


Floating on thy thoughtful forehead 
Cloud wreaths of its sky. 


Brother of our love ! 


Autumn's faded earth around thee, 




And its storms above ! 


Youthful years and maiden beauty. 


Evermore that turf lie lightly, 


Joy with them shoidd still abide, — 


And, with future showers. 


Instinct take the place of Duty, 


O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly 


Love, not Reason, guide. 


Blow the summer flowers ! 






Ever in the New rejoicing, 


In the locks thy forehead gracing, 


Kindly beckoning back the Old, 


Not a silvery streak ; 


Turning, with the gift of Midas, 


Nor a Hue of sorrow's tracing 


All things into gold. 


On thy fair young cheek ; 




Eyes of light and lips of roses. 


And the passing shades of sadness 


Such as Hylas wore, — 


Wearing even a welcome guise. 


Over all that curtain closes, 


As, when some bright lake lies open 


Wliich shall rise no more ! 


To the sunny skies, 


Will the vigil Love is keeping 


Every wing of bird above it. 


Round that grave of thine. 


Every light cloud floating on. 


Mournfully, like Jazer weeping 


Glitters like that flashing mirror 


Over Sibmah's vine ; 


In the self-same sun. 


Will the pleasant memories, swelling 




Gentle hearts, of thee. 


But upon thy youthful forehead 


In the spirit's distant dwelling 


Something like a shadow lies ; 


All unheeded be ? 


And a serious soul is looking 




From thy earnest eyes. 


If the spirit ever gazes, 




From its journeyings, back ; 


With an early introversion, 


If the immortal ever traces 


Through the forms of outward things. 


O'er its mortal track ; 


Seeking for the subtle essence, 


Wilt thou not, brother, meet us 


And the hidden springs. 


Sometimes on our way, 




And, in hours of sadness, greet us 


Deeper than the gilded surface 


As a spirit may ? 


Hath thy wakeful vision seen, 




Farther than the narrow present 


Peace be with thee, our brother, 


Have thy journeyings been. 


In the spirit-land ! 




Vainly look we for another 


Thou hast midst Life's empty noises 


In thy place to stand. 


Heard the solemn steps of Time, 


Unto Truth and Freedom giving 


And the low mystei-ious voices 


All thy early powers, 


Of another clime. 



172 



PERSONAL POEMS 



All the mystery of Being 

Hath upon thy spirit pressed, — 

Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer, 
Find no place of rest : 

That which mystic Plato pondered, 
That which Zeno heard with awe, 

And the star-rapt Zoroaster 
In his night watch saw. 

From the doubt and darkness springing 

Of the dim, uncertain Past, 
Moving to the dark still shadows 

O'er the Future cast, 

Early hath Life's mighty question 
Thrilled within thy heart of youth, 

With a deep and strong beseeching : 
What and where is Truth ? 

Hollow creed and ceremonial, 

Whence the ancient life hath fled, 

Idle faith unknown to action, 
Dull and cold and dead. 

Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings 

Only wake a quiet scorn, — 
Not from these thy seeking spirit 

Hath its answer drawn. 

But, like some tired child at even, 
On thy mother Nature's breast. 

Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking 
Truth, and peace, and rest. 

O'er that mother's rugged features 
Thou art throwing Fancy's veil. 

Light and soft as woven moonbeams, 
Beautiful and frail ! 

O'er the rough chart of Existence, 
Rocks of sin and wastes of woe, 

Soft airs breathe, and green leaves tremble. 
And cool fountains flow. 

And to thee an answer cometh 
From the earth and from the sky, 

And to thee the hills and waters 
And the stars reply. 

But a soul-sufficing answer 

Hath no outward origin ; 
More than Nature's many voices 

May be heard within. 



Even as the great Augustine 

Questioned earth and sea and sky, 

And the dusty tomes of learning 
And old poesy. 

But his earnest spirit needed 

More than outward Nature taught ; 

More than blest the poet's vision 
Or the sage's thought. 

Only in the gathered silence 
Of a calm and waiting frame. 

Light and wisdom as from Heaven 
To the seeker came. 

Not to ease and aimless quiet 
Doth that inward answer tend, 

But to works of love and duty 
As our being's end ; 

Not to idle dreams and trances, 
Length of face, and solemn tone, 

But to Faith, in daily striving 
And performance shown. 

Earnest toil and strong endeavor 

Of a spirit which within 
Wrestles with familiar evil 

And besetting sin ; 

And without, with tireless vigor. 
Steady heart, and weapon strong. 

In the power of truth assailing 
Every form of wrong. 

Guided thus, how passing lovely 
Is the track of Woolman's feet ! 

And his brief and simple record 
How serenely sweet ! 

O'er life's humblest duties throwing 
Light the earthling never knew, 

Freshening all its dark waste places 
As with Hermon's dew. 

All which glows in Pascal's pages, 
All which sainted Guion sought, 

Or the blue-eyed German Rahel 
Half-unconscious taught : 

Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, 
Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed 

Living warmth and starry brightness 
Round that poor man's head. 



TO A FRIEND 



73 



Not a vain and cold ideal, 

Not a poet's dream alone, 
But a presence warm and real. 

Seen and felt and known. 

When the red right-hand of slaughter 
Moulders with the steel it swung, 

When the name of seer and poet 
Dies on Memory's tongue, 

All bright thovights and pure shall gather 
Round that meek and suffering one, — 

Glorious, like the seer-seen angel 
Standing in the sun ! 

Take the good man's book and ponder 

What its pages say to tliee ; 
Blessed as the hand of healing 

May its lesson be. 

If it only serves to strengthen 
Yearnings for a higher good. 

For the fount of living waters 
And diviner food ; 

If the pride of human reason 
Feels its meek and still rebuke, 

Quailing like the eye of Peter 
From the Just One's look ! 

If with readier ear thou heedest 
What the Inward Teacher saith, 

Listening with a willing spirit 
And a childlike faith, — 

Thou mayst live to bless the giver, 
Who, himself but frail and weak. 

Would at least the highest welfare 
Of another seek ; 

And his gift, though poor and lowly 

It may seem to other eyes. 
Yet may prove an angel holy 

In a pilgrim's guise. 



LEGGETT'S MONUMENT 

William Leggett, who died in 1839 at the 
age of thirty-seven, was the intrepid editor of 
the Neiv York Evening Post and afterwards 
of The Plain Dealer. His vigorous assault 
upon the system of slavery brought down upon 
him the enmity of political defenders of the 
system. 



" Ye build the tombs of the prophets." — Holy Writ. 

Yes, pile the marble o'er him ! It is well 
That ye who mocked him in his long 

stern strife. 
And planted in the pathway of his life 
The ploughshares of your hatred hot from 
hell. 
Who clamored down the bold reformer 

when 
He pleaded for his captive fellow-men. 
Who spurned him in the market-place, and 
sought 
Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind 
In party chains the free and honest thought, 
The angel utterance of an upright mind. 
Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise 
The stony tribute of your tardy praise, 
For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame 
Of the brave heart beneath, but of the 
builders' shame ! 



TO A FRIEND 

ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE 

How smiled the land of France 
Under thy blue eye's glance, 

Light-hearted rover ! 
Old walls of chateaux gray, 
Towers of an early day. 
Which the Three Colors play 

Flauntingly over. 

Now midst the brilliant train 
Thronging the banks of Seine : 

Now midst the splendor 
Of the wild Alpine range. 
Waking with change on change 
Thoughts in thy young heart strange. 

Lovely, and tender. 

Vales, soft Elysian, 
Like those in the vision 

Of Mirza, when, dreaming. 
He saw the long hollow dell. 
Touched by the prophet's spell, 
Into an ocean swell 

With its isles teeming. 

Cliffs wrapped in snows of years. 
Splintering with icy spears 

Autumn's blue heaven : 
Loose rock and frozen slide, 
Hung on the mountain-side, 



74 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Waiting their hour to glide 
Downward, storm-driven ! 

Rhine-stream, by castle old, 
Baron's and robber's hold. 

Peacefully flowing ; 
Sweeping through vineyards green, 
Or where the cliffs are seen 
O'er the broad wave between 

Grim shadows throwing. 

Or, where St. Peter's dome 
Swells o'er eternal Rome, 

Vast, dim, and solemn ; 
Hymns ever chanting low, 
•Censers swmig to and fro. 
Sable stoles sweeping slow. 

Cornice and column ! 

Oh, as from each and all 
Will there not voices call 

Evermore back again ? 
In the mind's galleiy 
Wilt thou not always see 
Dim phantoms beckon thee 

O'er that old track again ? 

New forms thy presence hamit. 
New voices softly chant, 

New faces greet thee ! 
Pilgrims from many a shrine 
Hallowed by poet's line, 
At memory's magic sign. 

Rising to meet thee. 

And when such visions come 
Unto thy olden home. 

Will they not waken 
Deep thoughts of Him whose hand 
Led thee o'er sea and land 
Back to the household band 

Whence thou wast taken ? 

While, at the sunset time. 
Swells the cathedral's chime, 

Yet, in thy dreaming. 
While to thy spirit's eye 
Yet the vast mountains lie 
Piled in the Switzer's sky. 

Icy and gleaming : 

Prompter of silent prayer, 
Be the wild picture there 

In the mind's chamber. 
And, through each coming day 



Him who, as staff and stay, 
Watched o'er thy wandering way, 
Freshly remember. 

So, when the call shall be 
Soon or late unto thee. 

As to all given, 
Still may that picture live, 
All its fair forms survive. 
And to thy spirit give 

Gladness in Heaven ! 



LUCY HOOPER 



Lucy Hooper died at E 
1st of "8th mo., 1841, aged 



at Brooklyn, L.I., on the 

— J twenty-four years. 



They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, 

That all of thee we loved and cherished 
Has with thy summer roses perished ; 

And left, as its young beauty fled. 

An ashen memory in its stead, 
The twilight of a parted day 

Whose fading light is cold and vain, 
The heart's faint echo of a strain 

Of low, sweet music passed away. 
That true and loving heart, that gift 

Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound. 
Bestowing, with a glad unthrift. 

Its sminy light on all around. 
Affinities which only could 
Cleave to the pure, the true, and good ; 

And sympathies which found no rest. 

Save with the loveliest and best. 
Of them — of thee — remains there naught 

But sorrow in the mourner's breast ? 
A shadow in the land of thought ? 
No ! Even my weak and trembling faith 

Can lift for thee the veil which doubt 

And human fear have drawn about 
The all-awaiting scene of death. 

Even as thou wast I see thee still ; 
And, save the absence of all ill 
And pain and weariness, which here 
Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear, 
The same as when, two summers back, 
Beside our childhood's Merrimac, 
I saw thy dark eye wander o'er 
Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore. 
And heard thy low, soft voice alone 
Midst lapse of waters, and the tone 
Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown, 
There 's not a charm of soul or brow, 
Of all we knew and loved in thee, 



LUCY HOOPER 



■75 



But lives iu holier beauty now, 

Baptized in immortality ! 
Not mine the sad and freezing dream 

Of souls that, with their earthly mould, 

Cast oft" the loves and joys of old, 
Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam. 

As pure, as passionless, and cold; 
Nor mine the hope of Indra's son, 

Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, 
Life's myriads blending into one, 

In blank annihilation blest ; 
Dust-atoms of the infinite. 
Sparks scattered from the central light, 
And winning back through mortal pain 
Their old unconsciousness again. 
No ! I have friends in Spirit Land, 
Not shadows in a shadowy band, 

Not others, but themselves are they. 
And still I think of them the same 
As when the Master's summons came ; 
Tljeir change, — the holy morn-light break- 
ing 
Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking, — 

A change from twilight into day. 

They've laid thee midst the household 
graves, 

"Where father, brother, sister lie ; 
Below thee sweep the dark blue waves. 

Above thee bends the summer sky. 
Thy own loved church in sadness read 
Her solemn ritual o'er thy head, 
And blessed and hallowed with her prayer 
The turf laid lightlj' o'er thee there. 
That church, whose rites and liturgy, 
Sublime and old, were truth to thee. 
Undoubted to thy bosom taken, 
As symbols of a faith unshaken. 
Even I, of simpler views, could feel 
The beauty of thy trust and zeal ; 
And, owning not tliy creed, could see 
How deep a truth it seemed to thee, 
And how thy fervent heart had thrown 
O'er all, a coloi-ing of its own, 
And kindled up, intense and warm, 
A life in every rite and form, 
As, when on Chebar's banks of old, 
The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled, 
A spirit filled tlie vast machine, 
A life " within the wheels " was seen. 

Farewell ! A little time, and we 

Who knew thee well, and loved thee here, 

One after one shall follow thee 
As pilgrims through the gate of fear, 



Which opens on eternity. 

Yet shall we cherish not the less 

All that is left our hearts meanwhile ; 
The memory of thy loveliness 

Shall round our weary pathway smile, 
Like moonlight when the sun has set, 
A sweet and tender radiance yet. 
Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty, 

Thy generous scorn of all things wrong, 
The truth, the strength, the graceful beauty 

Which blended in thy song. 
All lovely things, by thee beloved. 

Shall whisper to our hearts of thee ; 
These green hills, where thy childhood 
roved. 

Yon river winding to the sea. 
The sunset light of autumn eves 

Reflecting on the deep, still floods. 
Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling leaves 

Of rainbow-tinted woods, 
These, m our view, shall henceforth take 
A tenderer meaning for thy sake ; 
And all thou lovedst of earth and sky 
Seem sacred to thy memory. 

FOLLEN 

ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FUTURE 

STATE " 

Charles Follen, one of the noblest contribu- 
tions of Germany to American citizenship, was 
at an early age driven from his professorship 
in the University of Jena, and compelled to seek 
shelter from official prosecution in Switzerland, 
on account of his liberal political opinions. He 
became Professor of Civil Law in the Univer- 
sity of Basle. The governments of Prussia, 
Austria, and Russia united in demanding his 
delivery as a political offender ; and, in conse- 
quence, he left Switzerland, and came to the 
United States. At the time of the formation 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society he was 
a Professor in Harvard University, honored for 
his genius, learning, and estimable character 
His love of liberty and hatred of oppression led 
him to seek an interview with Garrison and ex- 
press his sympathy with him. Soon after, he 
attended a meeting of the New England Anti- 
Slavery Society. An able speech was made by 
Rev. A. A. Phelps, and a letter of mine ad- 
dressed to the Secretary of the Society was 
read. Whereupon he rose and stated that his 
views were in unison with those of the Society, 
and that after hearing the speech and the let- 
ter, he was ready to join it, and abide the 
probable consequences of such an unpopular 
act. He lost by so doing his professorship^ 



176 



PERSONAL POEMS 



He was an able member of the Executive 
Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety. He perished in the iU-fated steamer Lex- 
ington, which was burned on its passage from 
New York, January 13, 1840. The few writings 
left behind him show him to have been a 
profound thinker of rare spiritual insight. 

Friend of my soul ! as with moist eye 
I look up from this page of thine, 

Is it a dream that thou art nigh, 
Tliy mild face gazing into mine ? 

That presence seems before rae now, 
A placid lieaven of sweet moonrise. 

When, dew-like, on the earth below 
Descends the quiet of the skies. 

The calm brow through the parted hair, 
The gentle lips which knew no guile, 

Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care 
With the bland beauty of their smile. 

Ah me ! at times that last dread scene 
Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea 

Will cast its shade of doubt between 
The failing eyes of Faith and thee. 

Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page, 
Where through the twilight air of earth. 

Alike enthusiast and sage, 

Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth. 

Lifting the Future's solemn veil ; 

The reaching of a mortal hand 
To put aside the cold and pale 

Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land ; 

In thoughts which answer to my own, 
In words which reach my inward ear. 

Like whispers from the void Unknown, 
I feel thy living presence here. 

The waves which lull thy body's rest. 
The dust tliy pilgrim footsteps trod, 

Unwasted, througli each change, attest 
The fixed economy of God. 

Shall these poor elements outlive 

The mind whose kingly will they 
wrought ? 

Their gross unconsciousness survive 
Thy godlike energy of thought ? 

Thou livest, Follcn ! not in vain 
Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne 



The burthen of Life's cross of pain. 

And the thorned crown of suffering worn. 

Oh, while Life's solemn mystery glooms 
Ai-ound us like a dungeon's wall, 

Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs. 
Silent the heaven which bends o'er 
all! 

While day by day our loved ones glide 
In spectral silence, hushed and lone. 

To the cold shadows which divide 

The living from the dread Unknown ; 

While even on the closing eye, 

And on the lip which moves in vain, 

The seals of that stern mystery 
Their undiscovered trust retain ; 

And only midst the gloom of death. 

Its mournful doubts and haunting fears, 

Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, 
Smile dimly on us through their tears ; 

'T is something to a heart like mine 
To think of thee as living yet ; 

To feel that such a light as thine 
Could not in utter darkness set. 

Less dreary seems the untried way 

Since thou hast left thy footpi-ints there, 

And beams of mournful beauty play 
Round the sad Angel's sable hair. 

Oh ! at this hour when half the sky 
Is glorious with its evening light. 

And fair broad fields of summer lie 
Hung o'er with greenness in my sight ; 

While through these elm-boughs wet with 
rain 
The sunset's golden walls are seen. 
With clover-bloom and yellow grain 

And wood- draped hill and stream be- 
tween ; 

I long to know if scenes like this 
Are hidden from an angel's eyes ; 

If earth's faniiliar loveliness 

Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies. 

For sweetly here upon thee grew 
The lesson which that beauty gave, 

The ideal of the pure and true 

In earth and sky and gliding wave. 



CHALKLEY HALL 



177 



And it may be that all which lends 
The soul an upward impulse here, 

With a diviner beauty blends, 
And greets us in a holier sphere. 

Through groves where blighting never fell 
The humbler flowers of earth may twine ; 

And simple draughts from childhood's well 
Blend with the angel-tasted wine. 

But be the prying ^'ision veiled, 
And let the seeking lips be dumb, 

Where even seraph eyes have failed 
Shall mortal blindness seek to come ? 

We only know that thou hast gone, 
And that the same returnless tide 

Which bore thee from us still glides on, 
And we who mourn thee with it glide. 

On all thou lookest we shall look. 
And to our gaze erelong shall turn 

That page of God's mysterious book 
We so much wish yet dread to learn. 

With Him, before whose awful power 
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee ; 

Who, in the silent greeting flower. 
And forest leaf, looked out ou thee, 

We leave thee, with a trust serene, 

Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can 
move, 

While with thy childlike faith we lean 
On Him whose dearest name is Love ! 



TO J. P. 

John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher and 
poet of Boston. 

Not as a poor requital of the joy 

With which my childhood heard that lay 

of thine, 
Which, like an echo of the song divine 
At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy 
Boy, 
Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine, — 
Not to the poet, but the man I bring 
In friendship's fearless trust my offering : 
How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see, 
Yet well I know that thou hast deemed with 

me 
Life all too earnest, and its time too short 



For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful 
sport ; 
And girded for thy constant strife with 
wrong. 
Like Nehemiah fighting while he wrought 
The broken walls of Zion, even thy song 
Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in every 
thought ! 



CHALKLEY HALL 

Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., was the 
residence of Thomas Chalkley, an eminent min- 
ister of the Friends' denomination. He was one 
of the early settlers of the Colony, and his Jour- 
nal, which was published in 1749, presents a 
quaint but beautiful picture of a life of unosten- 
tatious and simple goodness. He was the mas- 
ter of a merchant vessel, and, in his visits to 
the West Indies and Great Britain, omitted no 
opportunity to labor for the highest interests of 
his fellow-men. During a temporary residence 
in Philadelphia, in the summer of 1838, the 
quiet and beautifid scenery around the ancient 
village of Frankford frequently attracted me 
from the heat and bustle of the city. I have 
referred to my youthful acquaintance with his 
writings in Snow-Bound. 

How bland and sweet the greeting of this 
breeze 
To him who flies 
From crowded street and red wall's weary 

gleam, 
Till far behind him like a hideous dream 
The close dark city lies ! 

Here, while the market murmurs, while men 
throng 

The marble floor 
Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din 
Of the world's madness let me gather in 

My better thoughts once more. 

Oh, once again revive, while on my ear 

The cry of Gain 
And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away, 
Ye blessed memories of my early day 

Like sere grass wet with rain ! 

Once more let God's green earth and snnset 
air 
Old feelings waken ; 
Through weary years of toil and strife and 
ill, 



iyS 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Oh, let me feel that my good angel still 
Hath not his trust forsaken. 

And well do time and place befit my mood : 

Beneath the arms 
Of this embracing wood, a good man made 
His home, like Abraham resting in the shade 

Of Mamre's lonely palms. 

Here, rich with autumn gifts of countless 
years, 
The virgin soil 
Turned from the share he guided, and in 

rain 
And summer sunshine throve the fruits and 
grain 
Which blessed his honest toil. 

Here, from his voyages on the stormy seas, 

Weary and worn, 
He came to meet his children and to bless 
The Giver of all good in thankfulness 

And praise for his return. 

And here his neighbors gathered in to greet 

Their friend again, 
Safe from the wave and the destroying gales. 
Which reap untimely green Bermuda's 
vales, 

And vex the Carib main. 

To hear the good man tell of simple truth, 

Sown in an hour 
Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle, 
From the parched bosom of a barren soil, 

Raised up in life and power : 

How at those gatherings in Barbadian vales, 

A tendering love 
Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from 

heaven, 
And words of fitness to his lips were given. 

And strength as from above : 

How the sad captive listened to the Word, 

Until his chain 
Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit felt 
The healing balm of consolation melt 

Upon its life-long pain : 

How the armed warrior sat him down to hear 

Of Peace and Truth, 
And the proud ruler and his Creole dame, 
Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty came, 

And fair and bright-eyed youth. 



Oh, far away beneath New England's sky. 

Even when a boy, 
Following my plough by Merrimac's green 

shore, 
His simple record I have pondered o'er 

With deep and quiet joy. 

And hence this scene, in sunset glory 
warm, — 
Its woods around. 
Its still stream winding on in light and 

shade. 
Its soft, green meadows and its upland 
glade, — 
To me is holy ground. 

And dearer far than haunts where Genius 
keeps 
His vigils still ; 
Than that where Avon's son of song is laid. 
Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's 
shade. 
Or Virgil's laurelled hill. 

To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete, 

To Juliet's urn, 
Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove. 
Where Tasso sang, let yomig Romance and 
Love 

Like brother pilgrims turn. 

But here a deeper and serener charm 

To all is given ; 
And blessed memories of the faithful dead 
O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream 
have shed 

The holy hues of Heaven ! 



GONE 

Another hand is beckoning us, 

Another call is given ; 
And glows once more with Angel-steps 

The path which reaches Heaven. 

Our young and gentle friend, whose smile 
Made brighter summer hours, 

Amid the frosts- of autumn time 
Has left us with the flowers. 

No paling of the cheek of bloom 

Forewarned us of decay ; 
No shadow from the Silent Land 

Fell round our sister's way. 



TO RONGE 



^79 



The light of her young life went down, 

As sinks behind the hill 
The glory of a setting star, 

Clear, suddenly, and still. 

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed 

Eternal as the sky ; 
And like the brook's low song, her voice, — 

A sound which could not die. 

And half we deemed she needed not 

The changing of her sphere, 
To give to Heaven a Shining One, 

Who walked an Angel here. 

The blessing of her quiet life 

Fell on us like the dew ; 
And good thoughts where her footsteps 
pressed 

Like fairy blossoms grew. 

Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 

Were in her very look ; 
We read her face, as one who reads 

A true and holy book : 

The measure of a blessed hymn. 
To which our hearts could move ; 

The breathing of an inward psalm, 
A canticle of Idve. 

We miss her in the place of prayer. 
And by the hearth-fire's light ; 

We pause beside her door to hear 

Once more her sweet "Good-night ! " 

There seems a shadow on the day, 

Her smile no longer cheers ; 
A dimness on the stars of night. 

Like eyes that look through tears. 

Alone unto our Father's will 

One thought hath reconciled ; 
That He whose love exceedeth ours 

Hath taken home His child. 

Fold her, O Father ! in Thine arms, 

And let her henceforth be 
A messenger of love between 

Our human hearts and Thee. 

Still let her mild rebuking stand 

Between us and the wrong, 
And her dear memory serve to make 

Our faith in Goodness strong. 



And grant that she who, trembling, here 

Distrusted all her powers, 
May welcome to her holier home 

The well-beloved of ours. 



TO RONGE 

This was written after reading the powerful 
and manly protest of Johannes Ronge against 
the " pious fraud " of the Bishop of Treves. 
The bold movement of the young Catholic priest 
of Prussian Silesia seemed to nie full of promise 
to the cause of political as well as religious lib- 
erty in Europe. That it failed was due partly 
to the faults of tht reformer, but mainly to the 
disagreement of the Liberals of Germany upon 
a matter of dogma, which prevented them from 
unity of action. Rouge was born in Silesia in 
1813 and died in October, 1887. His autobiog- 
raphy was translated into Englislf and published 
in London in 1846. 

Strike home, strong-hearted man ! Down 

to the root 
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel. 
Thy work is to hew down. In God's name 

then 
Put nerve into thy task. Let other men 
Plant, as they may, that better tree whose 

fruit 
The wounded bosom of the Church shall 

heal. 
Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows 
Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand, 
On crown or crosier, which shall interjwse 
Between thee and the weal of Fatherland. 
Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all, 
Shake thou all German dream-land with 

the fall 
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk 
Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart 

monk. 
Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let 

us hear 
The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened 

ear 
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the 

light 
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of 

night. 
Be faithful to both worlds ; nor think to 

feed 
Earth's starving millions with the husks of 

creed. 
Servant of Him whose mission high and holy 



t8o 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the 
lowly, 

Thrust not his Eden promise from our 
sphere. 

Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's 
span ; 

Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here, 

The New Jerusalem comes down to ma,n ! 

Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like 
him. 

When the roused Teuton dashes from his 
limb 

The rusted chain of ages, help to bind 

His hands for whom thou claim 'st the free- 
dom of the mind ! 



CHANNING 

The last tinae I saw Dr. Channing was in the 
Summer of 1841, when, in company with my 
English friend, Jose^jh Sturge, so well known 
for his philanthropic labors and liberal political 
opinions, I visited him in his summer residence 
in Rhode Island. In recalling the impressions 
of that visit, it can scarcely be necessary to say, 
that I have no reference to the peculiar reli- 
gious opinions of a man whose life, beautifully 
and truly manifested above the atmosphere of 
sect, is now the world's common legacy. 

Not vainly did old poets tell. 
Nor vainly did old genius paint 

God's great and crowning miracle, 
The hero and the saint ! 

For even in a faithless day 

Can we our sainted ones discern ; 

And feel, while with them on the way, 
Our hearts within us burn. 

And thus the common tongue and pen 
Which, world-wide, echo Channing's 
fame, 

As one of Heaven's anointed men, 
Have sanctified his name. 

In vain shall Rome her portals bar, 
And shut from him her saintly prize, 

Whom, in the world's great calendar, 
All men shall canonize. 

By Narragansett's sunny bay, 

Beneath his green embowering wood, 

To me it seems but yesterday 
Since at his side I stood. 



The slopes lay green with summer rains, 
The western wind blew fresh and free. 

And glimmered down the orchard lanes 
The white surf of the sea. 

With us was one, who, calm and true. 
Life's highest purpose understood, 

And, like his blessed Master, knew 
The joy of doing good. 

Unlearned, unknov/n to lettered fame. 
Yet on the lips of England's poor 

And toiling millions dwelt his name, 
With blessings evermore. 

Unknown to power or place, yet where 
The sun looks o'er the Carib sea. 

It blended with the freeman's prayer 
And song of jubilee. 

He told of England's sin and wrong, 
The ills her suffering children know, 

The squalor of the city's throng, 
The green field's want and woe. 

O'er Channing's face the tenderness 

Of sympathetic sorrow stole, 
Like a still shadow, passionless, 

The sorrow of the soul. 

But when the generous Briton told 

How hearts were answering to his own, 

And Freedom's rising murmur rolled 
Up to the dull-eared throne, 

I saw, methought, a glad surprise 

Thrill through that frail and pain-worn 
frame, 

And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes, 
A still and earnest flame. 

His few, brief words were such as move 
The human heart, — the Faith-sown seeds 

Which ripen in the soil of love 
To high heroic deeds. 

No bars of sect or clime were felt. 

The Babel strife of tongues had ceased. 

And at one common altar knelt 
The Quaker and the priest. 

And not in vain : with strength renewed. 
And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim, 

For that brief meeting, each pursued 
The path allotted him. 



TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER 



i8i 



How echoes yet each Western hill 

And vale with Channing's dying word ! 

How are the hearts of freemen still 
By that great warning stirred ! 

The stranger treads his native soil, 
And pleads, with zeal unfelt before, 

The honest right of British toil, 
The claim of England's poor. 

Before him time-wrought barriers fall, 
Old fears subside, old hatreds melt, 

And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall. 
The Saxon greets the Celt. 

The yeoman on the Scottish lines. 

The Shefiield grinder, worn and grim, 

The delver in the Cornwall mines, 
Look up with hope to him. 

Swart smiters of the glowing steel, 
Dark feeders of the forge's flame, 

Pale watchers at the loom and wheel, 
Repeat his honored name. 

And thus the influence of that hour 
Of converse on Rhode Island's strand 

Lives in the calm, resistless power 
Which moves our fatherland. 

God blesses stUl the generous thought. 
And still the fitting word He speeds. 

And Truth, at His requiring taught, 
He quickens into deeds. 

Where is the victory of the grave ? 

AVhat dust upon the spirit lies ? 
God keeps the saered life he gave, — 

The prophet never dies ! 



TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH 
OF HIS SISTER 

Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturg'e, of 
Birmingham, the President of the British Com- 
plete Suffrage Association, died in the 6th 
month, 1845. She was the colleague, counsel- 
lor, and ever-ready helpmate of her brother 
in all his vast designs of beneficence. The 
Birmingham Pilot says of her: "Never, per- 
haps, were the active and passive virtues of 
the human character more harmoniously and 
beautifully blended than in this excellent wo- 



Thine is a grief, the depth of which an- 
other 

May never know ; 
Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken brother I 

To thee I go. 

I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding 

Thy hand in mine ; 
With even the weakness of my soul uphold, 
ing 

The strength of thine. 

I never knew, like thee, the dear departed ; 

I stood not by 
When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil- 
hearted 

Lay down to die. 

And on thy ears my words of weak condol- 
ing 
Must vainly fall : 
The funeral bell which in thy heart is toll- 
ing. 
Sounds over all ! 

I will not mock thee with the poor world's 
common 

And heartless phrase. 
Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman 

With idle praise. 

With silence only as their benediction, 

God's angels come 
Where, in the shadow of a great affliction. 

The soul sits dumb ! 

Yet, would I say what thy own heart ap- 
proveth : 
Our Father's will. 
Calling to Him the dear one whom He lov- 
eth, 
Is mercy still. 

Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel 

Hath evil vrrought : 
Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel, — 

The good die not ! 

God calls our loved ones, but we lose not 
wholly 
What He hath given ; 
They live on earth, in thought and deed, as 
truly 
As in His heaven. 



l82 



PERSONAL POEMS 



And she is with thee ; in thy path of trial 

She walketh yet ; 
Still with the baptism of thy self-denial 

Her locks are wet. 

Up, then, my brother ! Lo, the fields of 
harvest 
Lie white in view ! 
She lives and loves thee, and the God thou 

servest 
To both is true. 

Thrust in thy sickle ! England's toilworn 
peasants 
Thy call ^bide ; 
And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy 
presence, 
Shall glean beside ! 



DANIEL WHEELER 

Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of 
Friends, who had labored in the cause of his 
Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and 
the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in 
the spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to 
this country. 

O DEARLY loved ! 
And worthy of our love ! No more 
Thy aged form shall rise before 
The hushed and waiting worshipper. 
In meek obedience utterance giving 
To words of truth, so fresh and living, 
That, even to the inward sense, 
They bore unquestioned evidence 
Of an anointed Messenger ! 
Or, bowing down thy silver hair 
In reverent awfulness of prayer, 

The world, its time and sense, shut out, 
The brightness of Faith's holy trance 
Gathered upon thy countenance. 

As if each lingering cloud of doubt. 
The cold, dark shadows resting here 
In Time's unluminous atmosphere, 

Were lifted by an angel's hand, 
And through them on thy spiritual eye 
Shone down the blessedness on high, 

The glory of the Better Land ! 

The oak has fallen ! 
While, meet for no good work, the vine 
May yet its worthless branches twine. 
Who knoweth not that with thee fell 
A great man in our Israel ? 



Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, 
Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, 
And in thy hand retaining yet 
The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell ! 
Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free, 

Across the Neva's cold morass 
The breezes from the Frozen Sea 

With winter's arrowy keenness pass ; 
Or where the unwarning tropic gale 
Smote to the waves thy tattered sail, 
Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat 
Against Tahiti's mountains beat ; 

The same mysterious Hand which gave 
Deliverance upon land and wave. 
Tempered for thee the blasts which blew 

Ladaga's frozen surface o'er. 
And blessed for thee the baleful dew 

Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, 
Beneath this sunny heaven of ours. 
Midst our soft airs and opening flowers 
Hath given thee a grave ! 

His will be done. 
Who seeth not as man, whose way 

Is not as ours ! 'T is well with thee ! 
Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay 
Disquieted thy closing day. 
But, evermore, thy soul could say, 

" My Father careth still for me ! " 
Called from thy hearth and home, — from 
her. 

The last bud on thy household tree, 
The last dear one to minister 

In duty and in love to tliee. 
From all which nature holdeth dear, 

Feeble with years and worn with pain, 

To seek our distant land again. 
Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing 

The things which should befall thee here, 

Whether for labor or for death. 
In childlike trust serenely going 

To that last trial of thy faith ! 

Oh, far away. 
Where never shines our Northern star 

On that dark waste which Balboa saw 
From Darien's mountains stretching far, 
So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that 

there, 
With forehead to its damp wind bare, 

He bent his mailed knee in awe ; 
In many an isle whose coral feet 
The surges of that ocean beat. 
In thy palm shadows, Oahu, 

And Honolulu's silver bay, 



TO FREDRIKA BREMER 



183 



Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue, 

And taro-plaiiis of Tooboonai, 
Are gentle hearts, which long shall be 
Sad as our own at thought of thee. 
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed. 
Whose souls in weariness and need 

Were strengthened and refreshed by 
thine. 
For blessed by our Father's hand 

Was thy deep love and tender care, 

Thy ministry and fervent prayer, — 
Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine 
To Israel in a weary land ! 

And they who drew 
By thousands round thee, in the hour 

Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep. 

That He who bade the islands keep 
Silence before Him, might renew 

Their strength with His unslumbering 
power. 
They too shall mourn that thou art gone, 

That nevermore thy aged lip 
Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn. 
Of those who first, rejoicing, heard 
Through thee the Gospel's glorious word, — 

Seals of thy true apostleship. 
And, if the brightest diadem. 

Whose gems of glory purely burn 

Around the ransomed ones in bliss, 
Be evermore reserved for them 

Who here, through toil and sorrow, 
tui'u 

Many to righteousness, 
May we not think of thee as wearing 
That star-like crown of light, and bear- 
ing. 
Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band, 
Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand ; 
And joining with a seraph's tongue 
In that new song the elders sung. 
Ascribing to its blessed Giver 
Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever ! 

Farewell ! 
And though the ways of Zion mourn 
When her strong ones are called away, 
Who like thyself have calmly borne 
The heat and burden of the day, 
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth 
His ancient watch around us keepeth ; 
Still, sent from His creating hand, 
New witnesses for Truth shall stand, 
New instruments to sound abroad 
The Gospel of a risen Lord ; 



To gather to the fold once more 
The desolate and gone astray. 
The scattered of a cloudy day. 

And Zion's broken walls restore ; 
And, through the travail and the toil 

Of true obedience, minister 
Beauty for ashes, and the oil 

Of joy for mourning, unto her ! 
So shall her holy bounds increase 
With walls of praise and gates of peace 
So shall the Vine, which martyr tears 
And blood sustained in other years. 

With fresher life be clothed upon ; 
And to the world in beauty show 
Like the rose-plant of Jericho, 

And glorious as Lebanon ! 



TO FREDRIKA BREMER 

It is proper to say that these lines are the 
joint impromptus of my sister and mjself . They 
are inserted here as- an expression of our admira- 
tion of the gifted stranger whom we have since 
learned to love as a friend. 

Seeress of the misty Norland, 
Daughter of the Vikings bold, 

Welcome to the sunny Vineland, 
Which thy fathers souglit of old ! 

Soft as flow of Silja's waters. 

When the moon of summer shines, 

Strong as Winter from his mountains 
Roaring through the sleeted pines. 

Heart and ear, we long have listened 

To thy saga, rune, and song ; 
As a household joy and presence 

We have known and loved thee long. 

By the mansion's marble mantel, 

Round the log-walled cabin's hearth, 

Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies 
Meet and mingle with our mirth. 

And o'er weary spirits keeping 

Sorrow's night-watch, long and chillj 

Shine they like thy sun of summer 
Over midnight vale and hill. 

We alone to thee are strangers, 
Thou our friend and teacher art ; 

Come, and know us as we know thee ; 
Let us meet thee heart to heart ! 



i84 



PERSONAL POEMS 



To our homes and household altars 
We, in turn, thy steps would lead. 

As thy loving hand has led us 
O'er the threshold of the Swede. 



TO AVIS KEENE 

ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES 

Thanks for thy gift 

Of ocean flowers, 
Born where the golden drift 
Of the slant sunshine falls 
Down the green, tremulous walls 
Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers. 
Where, under rainbows of perpetual 
showers, 
God's gardens of the deep 
His patient angels keep ; 
Gladdening the dim, strange solitude 
With fairest forms and hues, and thus 
Forever teaching us 
The lesson which the many-colored skies. 
The flowers, and leaves, and painted butter- 
flies. 
The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird 

that flings 
The tropic sunshine from its golden wings, 
The brightness of the human countenance. 
Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, 
Forevermore repeat. 
In varied tones and sweet. 
That beauty, in and of itself, is good. 

O kind and generous friend, o'er whom 
The sunset hues of Time are cast, 
Painting, upon the overpast 
And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow 
The promise of a fairer morrow. 
An earnest of the better life to come ; 
The binding of the spirit broken. 
The warning to the erring spoken, 

The comfort of the sad. 
The eye to see, the hand to cull 
Of common things the beautiful. 

The absent heart made glad 
By simple gift or graceful token 
Of love it needs as daily food, 
All own one Source, and all are good ! 
Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach. 
Where spent waves glimmer up the 

beach. 
And toss their gifts of weed and shell 
From foamy curve and combing swell, 



No unbefitting task was thine 

To weave these flowers so soft and 
fair 
In unison with His design 

Who loveth beauty everywhere ; 
And makes in every zone and clime, 

In ocean and in upper air, 
" All things beautiful in their time." 

For not alone in tones of awe and power 

He speaks to man ; 
The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower 
His rainbows span ; 
And where the caravan 
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air 
The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage 
there, 
He gives the weary eye 
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot nooa 
hours. 
And on its branches dry 
Calls out the acacia's flowers ; 
And where the dark shaft pierces down 

Beneath the mountain roots. 
Seen by the miner's lamp alone. 
The star-like crystal shoots ; 
So, where, the winds and waves below, 
The coral-branched gardens grow. 
His climbing weeds and mosses show, 
Like foliage, on each stony bough, 
Of varied hues more strangely gay 
Than forest leaves in autumn's day ; — 
Thus evermore. 
On sky, and wave, and shore, 
An all-pervading beauty seems to say : 
God's love and power are one ; and 

they. 
Who, like the thunder of a sultry day. 
Smite to restore, 
And they, who, like the gentle wind, ujilift 
The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift 

Their perfume on the air, 
Alike may serve Him, each, with their own 

gift, 
Making their lives a prayer ! 



THE HILL-TOP 

The burly driver at my side, 
We slowly climbed tlie hill. 

Whose summit, in the hot noontide. 
Seemed rising, rising still. 

At last, our short noon-shadows hid 
The top-stone, bare and brown, 



ELLIOTT 



185 



From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, 
The rough mass slanted down. 

I felt the cool breath of the North ; 

Between me and the sun, 
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, 

I saw the cloud-shades rim. 
Before me, stretched for glistening miles, 

Lay mountain-girdled Squam ; 
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles 

Upon its bosom swam. 

And, glimmering through the sun-haze 
warm. 

Far as the eye could roam. 
Dark billows of an earthquake storm 

Beflecked with clouds like foam, 
Their vales in misty shadow deep, 

Their rugged peaks in shine, 
I saw the mountain ranges sweep 

The horizon's northern line. 

There towered Chocorua's peak ; and west, 

Moosehillock's woods were seen. 
With many a nameless slide-scarred crest 

And pine-dark gorge between. 
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, 

The great Notch mountains shone. 
Watched over by the solemn-browed 

And awful face of stone ! 

" A good look-off ! " the driver spake : 

" About this time last j'ear, 
I drove a party to the Lake, 

And stopped, at evening, here. 
'T was duskish down below ; but all 

These hills stood in the sun. 
Till, dipped behind yon purple wall, 

He left them, one by one. 

" A lady, who, from Thornton hill, 

Had held her place outside, 
And, as a pleasant woman will. 

Had cheered the long, dull ride. 
Besought me, with so sweet a smile, 

That — though I hate delays — 
I could not choose but rest awhile, — 

(These women have such ways !) 

" On yonder mossy ledge she sat. 

Her sketch upon her knees, 
A stray brown lock beneath her hat 

Unrolling in the breeze ; 
Her sweet face, in the sunset light 



Upraised and glorified, — 
I never saw a prettier sight 
In all my mountain ride. 

" As good as fair ; it seemed her joy- 
To comfort and to give ; 

My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, 
Will bless her while they live ! " 

The tremor in the driver's tone 
His manhood did not shame : 

" I dare say, sir, you may have known " - 
He named a well-known name. 

Then sank the pyramidal mounds, 

The blue lake fled away ; 
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, 

A lighted hearth for day ! 
From lonely years and weary miles 

The shadows fell apart ; 
Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles 

Shone warm into my heart. 

We journeyed on ; but earth and sky 

Had power to charm no more ; 
Still dreamed my inward-turning eye 

The dream of memory o'er. 
Ah ! human kindness, human love, — 

To few who seek denied ; 
Too late we learn to prize above 

The whole round world beside ! 



ELLIOTT 

Ebenezer Elliott was to the artisans of Eng- 
land what Burns was to the peasantry of Scot- 
land. His Corn-law Rhymes contributed not a 
little to that overwhelming tide of popular 
opinion and feeling which resulted in the repeal 
of the tax on bread. Well has the eloquent 
author of The Heforms and Beformers of Great 
Britain said of him, " Not corn-law repealers 
alone, but all Britons who moisten their scanty 
bread with the sweat of the brow, are largely 
indebted to his inspiring lay, for the mighty 
bound which the laboring mind of England 
has taken in our day." 

Hands off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer ! play 

No trick of priestcraft here ! 
Back, puny lordling ! darest thou lay 

A hand on Elliott's bier ? 
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, 

Beneath his feet he trod : 
He knew the locust swarm that cursed 

The harvest-fields of God. 



[86 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Oil these pale lips, the smothered thought 

Which England's millions feel. 
A fierce and fearful splendor caught, 

As from his forge the steel. 
Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire 

His smitten anvil flung ; 
God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's 
ire. 

He gave them all a tongue ! 

Then let the poor man's horny hands 

Bear up the mighty dead, 
And labor's swart and stalwart bands 

Behind as mourners tread. 
Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds, 

Leave rank its minster floor ; 
Give England's green and daisied grounds 

The poet of the poor ! 

Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge 

That brave old heart of oak, 
With fitting dirge from sounding forge, 

And pall of furnace smoke ! 
Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds. 

And axe and sledge are swung. 
And, timing to their stormy sounds. 

His stormy lays are sung. 

There let the peasant's step be heard, 

The grinder chant his rhyme ; 
Nor patron's praise nor dainty word 

Befits the man or time. 
No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh 

For him whose words were bread ; 
The Runic rhyme and spell whereby 

The foodless poor were fed ! 

Pile up the tombs of rank and pride, 

O England, as thou wilt ! 
With pomp to nameless worth denied, 

Emblazon titled guilt ! 
No part or lot in these we claim ; 

But, o'er the sounding wave, 
A common right to Elliott's name, 

A freehold in his grave ! 

ICHABOD 

This poem was the outcome of the surprise 
and grief and forecast of evil consequences 
which I felt on reading the seventh of March 
speech of Daniel Webster in support of the 
"compromise," and the Fugitive Slave Law. 
No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. 
On the contrary my admiration of the splendid 
personality and intellectual power of the great 



Senator was never stronger than when I laid 
down his speech, and, in one of the saddest 
moments of my life, penned my protest. I 
saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its sure 
results, — the Slave Power arrogant and defi- 
ant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out 
its scheme for the extension of its baleful sys- 
tem, or the dissolution of the Union, the guar- 
anties of personal liberty in the fi-ee States 
broken down, and the whole country made the 
hunting-ground of slave-catchere. In the lior- 
ror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, 
if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones 
of stern and sorrowful rebuke. 

But death softens all resentments, and the 
consciousness of a common inheritance of frail- 
ty and weakness modifies the severity of 
judgment. Years after, in The Lost Occasion, 
I gave utterance to an almost universal regret 
that the great statesman did not live to see the 
flag which he loved trampled under the feet of 
Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make 
his last days glorious in defence of " Liberty 
and Union, one and inseparable." 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Forevermore ! 

Revile him not, the Tempter hath 

A snare for all ; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall ! 

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age, 

Falls back in night. 

Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark 

A bright soul driven. 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark. 

From hope and heaven ! 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now. 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim. 

Dishonored brow. 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 

Of all we loved and honored, naught 
Save power remains ; 



THE LOST OCCASION 



18/ 



A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone ; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled : 
When faith is lost, when honor dies. 

The man is dead ! 

Then, pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame ; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze. 

And hide the shame ! 



THE LOST OCCASION 

Some die too late and some too soon. 
At early morning, heat of noon. 
Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, 
Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
With eyes of power and Jove's own 

brow. 
With all the massive strength that fills 
Thy home-horizon's granite hills, 
With rarest gifts of heart and head 
From manliest stock inherited. 
New England's stateliest type of man. 
In port and speech Olympian ; 
Whom no one met, at first, but took 
A second awed and wondering look 
(As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece 
On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece) ; 
Whose words in simplest homespun clad. 
The Saxon strength of Csedmon's had. 
With power reserved at need to reach 
The Roman forum's loftiest speech, 
Sweet with persuasion, eloquent 
In passion, cool in argument. 
Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes 
As fell the Norse god's hammer blows, 
Crushing as if with Talus' flail 
Through Error's logic-woven mail. 
And failing only when they tried 
The adamant of the righteous side, — 
Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved 
Of old friends, by the new deceived, 
Too soon for us, too soon for thee, 
Beside thy lonely Northern sea. 
Where long and low the marsh-lands spread. 
Laid wearily down th}' august head. 

Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 
Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow ; 



The late-sprung mine that underlaid 

Thy sad concessions vainh' made. 

Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's 

wall 
The star-flag of the Union fall, 
And armed rebellion pressing on 
The broken lines of Washington ! 
No stronger voice than thine liad then 
Called out the utmost might of men, 
To make the Union's charter free 
And strengthen law by liberty. 
How had that stern arbitrament 
To tliy gray age youth's vigor lent, 
Shaming ambition's paltry prize 
Before thy disillusioned eyes ; 
Breaking the spell about thee wound 
Like the green withes that Samson 

bound ; 
Redeeming in one effort grand. 
Thyself and thy imperilled land ! 
Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 
O sleeper by the Northern sea. 
The gates of opportunity ! 
God fills the gaps of human need, 
Each crisis brings its word and deed. 
Wise men and strong we did not lack ; 
But still, with memory turning back, 
In the dark hours we thought of thee, 
And thy lone grave beside the sea. 

Above that grave the east winds blow, 

And from the marsh-lands drifting slow 

The sea-fog comes, with evermore 

The wave-wash of a lonely shore. 

And sea-bird's melancholy cry. 

As Nature fain would typify 

The sadness of a closing scene. 

The loss of that which should have been. 

But, where thy native mountains bare 

Their foreheads to diviner air, 

Fit emblem of enduring fame. 

One lofty summit keeps thy name. 

For thee the cosmic forces did 

The rearing of that pyramid, 

The prescient ages shaping with 

Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. 

Sunrise and sunset lay thereon 

With hands of light their benison. 

The stars of midnight pause to set 

Their jewels in its coronet. 

And evermore that mountain mass 

Seems climbing from the shadowy pass 

To light, as if to manifest 

Thy nobler self, thy life at best ! 



i88 



PERSONAL POEMS 



WORDSWORTH 

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS 
MEMOIRS 

Dear friends, who read the world aright, 
And in its common forms discern 

A beauty and a harmony 
The many never learn ! 

Kindred in soul of him who found 
In simple flower and leaf and stone 

The impulse of the sweetest lays 
Our Saxon tongue has known, — 

Accept this record of a life 

As sweet and pure, as calm and good. 
As a long day of blandest June 

In green field and in wood. 

How welcome to our ears, long pained 
By strife of sect and party noise. 

The brook-like murmur of his song 
Of nature's simple joys ! 

The violet by its mossy stone, 

The primrose by the river's brim, 

And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
Immortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake. 
The rosy tints his sunset brought. 

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
And mountain-peaks of thought. 

Art builds on sand ; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall ; 

But that which shares the life of God 
With Him surviveth all. 

TO 

LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S 
EXCURSION 

Fair Nature's priestesses ! to whom. 
In hieroglyph of bud and bloom. 

Her mysteries are told ; 
Who, wise in lore of wood and mead, 
The seasons' pictured scrolls can read. 

In lessons manifold ! 

Thanks for the courtesy, and gay 
Grood-lmmor, which on Washing Day 
Our ill-timed visit bore ; 



Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke 
The morning dreams of Artichoke, 
Along his wooded shore ! 

Varied as varying Nature's ways, 
Sprites of tlie river, woodland fays, 

Or mountain nymphs, ye seem ; 
Free-limbed Dianas on the green. 
Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undiue, 

Upon your favorite stream. 

The forms of which the poets told, 
The fair benignities of old, 

Were doubtless such as you ; 
What more than Artichoke the rill 
Of Helicon ? Than Pipe-stave hill 

Arcadia's mountain-view ? 

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, 
In wild Hymettus' scented shade. 

Than those you dwell among ; 
Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined 
With roses, over banks inclined 

With trembling harebells hung ! 

A charmed life unknown to death. 
Immortal freshness Nature hath ; 

Her fabled fount and glen 
Are now and here : Dodona's shrine 
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine, — 

All is that e'er hath been. 

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home ; 

We need but eye and ear 
In all our daily walks to trace 
The outlines of incarnate grace. 

The hymns of gods to hear ! 



IN PEACE 

A TRACK of moonlight on a quiet lake. 
Whose small waves on a silver-sanded 

shore 
Whisper of peace, and with the low winds 

make 
Such harmonies as keep the woods awake. 
And listening all night long for their sweet 

sake ; 
A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered 

o'er 
By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light 
On viewless stems, with folded wings of 

white ; 



KOSSUTH 



189 



A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far 

seen 
Where the low westering day, with gold 

and green, 
Purple and amber, softly blended, fills 
The wooded vales, and melts among the 

hills ; 
A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest 
On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, 
Bearing alike upon its placid breast. 
With earthly flowers and heavenly stars im- 
pressed, 
The hues of time and of eternity : 
Such are the pictures which the thought of 

thee, 
O friend, awakeneth, — charming the keen 
pain 
Of thy departure, and our sense of loss 
Requiting with the fullness of thy gain. 
Lo ! on the quiet grave thy life-borne 
cross, 
Dropped only at its side, methinks doth 

shine, 
Of thy beatitude the radiant sign ! 

No sob of grief, no wild lament be there, 
To break the Sabbath of the holy air ; 
But, in their stead, the silent-breathing 

prayer 
Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine. 
O spirit redeemed ! Forgive us, if hence- 
forth, 
With sweet and pure similitudes of earth, 
We keep thy pleasant memory freshly 
green. 
Of love's inheritance a priceless part. 
Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is 
seen ^ 

To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art. 
With pencil dipped alone in colors of the 
heart. 



BENEDICITE 

God's love and peace be with thee, where 
Soe'er this soft autumnal air 
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair ! 

Whether through city casements comes 
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms. 
Or, out among the woodland blooms, 

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, 
Imparting, in its glad embrace, 
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace ! 



Fair Nature's book together read. 

The old wood-paths that knew our tread, 

The maple shadows overhead, — 

The hills we climbed, the river seen 
By gleams along its deep ravine, — 
All keep thy memory fresh and green. 

Where'er I look, where'er I stray, 
Thy thought goes with me on my way, 
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day ; 

O'er lapse of time and change of scene, 
The weary waste which lies between 
Thyself and me, my heart I lean. 

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, 

nor 
The half-unconscioiis power to draw 
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law. 

With these good gifts of God is cast 
Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast 
To hold the blessed angels fast. 

If, then, a fervent wish for thee 

The gracious heavens will heed from me, 

What should, dear heart, its burden be ? 

Tlie sighing of a shaken reed, — 
What can I more than meekly plead 
The greatness of our common need ? 

God's love, — unchanging, pure, and true, — 
The Paraclete white-shining through 
His peace, — the fall of Hermon's dew ! 

With such a prayer, on this sweet day, 
As thou mayst hear and I may say, 
I greet thee, dearest, far away ! 



KOSSUTH 

It can scarcely be necessary to say that there 
are elements in the character and passages in 
the history of the great Hungarian statesman 
and orator, which necessarily command the ad- 
miration of those, even, who believe that no 
political revolution was ever worth the price of 
himian blood. 

Type of two mighty continents ! — com- 
bining 
The strength of Europe with the warmth 
and glow 



tgo 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shining 
Of Orient splendors over Northern snow ! 
Who shall receive him ? Who, unblush- 
ing, speak 
Welcome to him, who, while he strove to 

break 
The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, 

smote oli" 
At the same blow the fetters of the serf, 
Rearing the altar of his Fatherland 

On the firm base of freedom, and thereby 

Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand, 

Mocked not the God of Justice witli a 

lie! 

Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece ? Who 

shall give 
Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive ? 
Not he who, all her sacred trusts betray- 
ing, 
Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain 
The swarthy Kossuths of our land again ! 
Not he whose utterance now from lips de- 
signed 
The bugle-march of Liberty to wind. 
And call her hosts beneath the breaking 

light, 
The keen reveille of her morn of fight. 
Is but the hoarse note of the blood- 
hound's baying. 
The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's 

flight ! 
Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest 
In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees. 
Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best. 
To lend a voice to Freedom's sympa- 
thies. 
And hail the coming of the noblest guest 
The Old World's wrong has given the New 
World of the West ! 



TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER 

AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER 
OF HORACE 

These lines were addressed to my worthy 
friend Joshua Coffin, teacher, historian, and an- 
tiquarian. He was one of the twelve persons 
who with William Lloyd Garrison formed the 
first anti-slavery society in New England. 

Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down 
Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown ! 
Never be thy shadow less, 



Never fail thy cheerfulness ; 
Care, that kills the cat, may plough 
Wrinkles in the miser's brow, 
Deepen envy's spiteful fro^vn, 
Draw tiie mouths of bigots down, 
Plague ambition's dream, and sit 
H'avy on the hypocrite, 
Haunt the rich man's door, and ride 
In the gilded coach of pride ; — 
Let the fiend pass ! — what can he 
Find to do with such as thee ? 
Seldom comes that evil guest 
Where the conscience lies at rest, 
And brown health and quiet wit 
Smiling on the threshold sit. 

I, the urchin unto whom. 
In that smoked and dingy room. 
Where the district gave thee rule 
O'er its ragged winter school. 
Thou didst teach the mysteries 
Of those weary A B C's, — 
Where, to fill the every pause 
Of thy wise and learned saws. 
Through the cracked and crazy wall 
Came the cradle-rock and squall. 
And the goodman's voice, at strife 
W^ith his shrill and tipsy wife, — 
Luring us by stories old. 
With a comic unction told, 
More than by the eloquence 
Of terse birchen arguments 
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look 
With complacence on a book ! — 
Where the genial pedagogue 
Half forgot his rogues to flog, 
Citing tale or apologue. 
Wise and merry in its drift 
As was Phsedrus' twofold gift. 
Had the little rebels known it, 
Elsmn et prudentiam monet! 
I, — the man of middle years, 
In whose sable locks appears 
Many a warning fleck of gray, — 
Looking back to that far day. 
And tliy primal lessons, feel ' 

Grateful smilesMny lips unseal. 
As, remembering thee, I blend 
Olden teacher, present friend. 
Wise with antiquarian search, 
In the scrolls of State and Church : 
Named on history's title-page. 
Parish-clerk and justice sage ; 
For tlie ferule's wholesome awe 
Wielding now the sword of law. 



TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER 



[91 



Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, 


Long-drawn bill of wine and beer 


Gathering up the scattered leaves 


For liis ordination cheer. 


Which the wrinkled sibyl cast 


Or the flip that wellnigh made 


Careless from her as she passed, — 


Glad his funeral cavalcade ; 


Twofold citizen art thou, 


Weary prose, and poet's lines. 


Freeman of the past and now. 


Flavored by their age, like wines, 


He who bore thy name of old 


Eulogistic of some quaint, 


Midway in the heavens did hold 


Doubtful, Puritanic saint ; 


Over Gibeou moon and sun ; 


Lays that quickened husking jigs. 


Thou hast bidden them backward run ; 


Jests that shook grave periwigs. 


Of to-day the present ray 


When the parson had his jokes 


Flinging over yesterday ! 


And his glass, like other folks ; 




Sermons that, for mortal hours. 


Let the busy ones deride 


Taxed our fathers' vital powers, 


What I deem of right thy pride : 


As the long nmeteenthlies poured 


Let the fools their treadmills grind, 


Downward from the sounding-board, 


Look not forward nor behind, 


And, for fire of Pentecost, 


Shuftie in and wriggle out, 


Touched their beards December's frost. 


Veer with every breeze about. 




Turning like a windmill sail, 


Time is hastening on, and we 


Or a dog that seeks his tail ; 


What our fathers are shall be, — 


Let them laugh to see thee fast 


Shadow-shapes of memory ! 


Tabernacled in the Past, 


Joined to that vast multitude 


Working out with eye and lip 


Where the great are but the good. 


Riddles of old penmanship. 


And the mind of strength shall prove 


Patient as Belzoni there 


Weaker than the heart of love ; 


Sorting out, with loving care. 


Pride of graybeard wisdom less 


Mummies of dead questions stripped 


Than the infant's guilelessness. 


From their sevenfold manuscript ! 


And his song of sorrow more 




Than the crown the Psalmist wore ! 


Dabbling, in their noisy way, 


Who shall then, with pious zeal. 


In the puddles of to-day. 


At our moss-grown thresholds knee ^ 


Little know they of that vast 


From a stained and stony page 


Solemn ocean of the past, 


Pleading to a careless age. 


On whose margin, wreck-bespread. 


With a patient eye like thine, 


TIiou art walking with the dead. 


Prosing tale and limping line, 


Questioning the stranded years. 


Names and words tlie hoary rime 


Waking smiles by turns, and tears. 


Of the Past has made sublime ? 


As thou callest up again 


Who shall work for us as well 


Shapes the dust has long o'erlain, — 


The antiquarian's miracle ? 


Fair-haired woman, bearded man. 


Who to seeming life recall 


Cavalier and Puritan ; 


Teacher grave and pupil small ? 


In an age whose eager view 


Who shall give to thee and me 


Seeks but present things, and new. 


Freeholds in futurity ? 


Mad for party, sect and gold. 




Teaching reverence for the old. 


Well, whatever lot be mine, 




Long and happy days be thine, 


On that shore, with fowler's tact, 


Ere thy full and honored age 


Coolly bagging fact on fact, 


Dates of time its latest page ! 


Naught amiss to thee can float, 


Squire for master, State for school, 
Wisely lenient, live and rule ; 


Tale, or song, or anecdote ; 


Village gossip, centuries old. 


Over grown-up knave and rogue 


Scandals by our grandams told. 


Play the watchful pedagogue ; 


What the pilgrim's table spread, 


Or, while pleasure smiles on duty, 


Where he lived, and whom he wed, 


At the call of youth and beauty, 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Speak for them the spell of law 
Which shall bar and bolt withdraw, 
And the flaming sword remove 
From the Paradise of Love. 
Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore 
Ancient tome and record o'er ; 
Still thy week-day lyrics croon, 
Pitch in church the Sunday tune. 
Showing something, in thy part, 
Of the old Puritanic art. 
Singer after Sternhold's heart ! 
In thy pew, for many a year. 
Homilies from Oldbug hear, 
Who to wit like that of South, 
And the Syrian's golden mouth. 
Doth the homely pathos add 
Which the pilgrim preachers had ; 
Breaking, like a child at play. 
Gilded idols of the day. 
Cant of knave and pomp of fool 
Tossing with his ridicule. 
Yet, in earnest or in jest, 
Ever keeping truth abreast. 
And, when thou art called, at last, 
To thy townsmen of the past, 
Not as stranger shalt thou come ; 
Thou shalt find thyself at home 
With the little and the big. 
Woollen cap and periwig. 
Madam in her high-laced ruff. 
Goody in her home-made stuff, — 
Wise and simple, rich and poor, 
Thou hast known them all before ! 



THE CROSS 

Richard Dillingham, a young member of the 
Society of Friends, died in the Nashville peni- 
tentiary, where he was confined for the act of 
aiding the escape of fugitive slaves. 

" The cross, if rightly borne, shall be 
No burden, but support to thee ; " 
So, moved of old time for our sake, 
The holy monk of Kempen spake. 

Thou brave and true one ! upon whom 
Was laid the cross of martyrdom. 
How didst thou, in thy generous youth, 
Bear witness to this blessed truth ! 

Thy cross of suffering and of shame 
A staff within thy hands became, 



In paths where faith alone could see 
The Master's steps supporting thee. 

Thine was the seed-time ; God alone 
Beholds the end of what is sown ; 
Beyond our vision, weak and dim, 
The harvest-time is hid with Him. 

Yet, unforgotten where it lies. 
That seed of generous sacrifice. 
Though seeming on the desert cast, 
Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last. 

THE HERO 

The hero of the incident related in this poem 
was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the well-known 
philanthropist, who when a young man volun- 
teered his aid in the Greek struggle for inde- 
pendence. 

" Oh for a knight like Bayard, 
Without reproach or fear ; 
My light glove on his casque of steel, 
My love-knot on his spear ! 

" Oh for the white plume floating 
Sad Zutphen's field above, — 
The lion heart in battle, 

The woman's heart in love ! 

" Oh that man once more were manly. 
Woman's pride, and not her scorn : 
That once more the pale young mother 
Dared to boast ' a man is born ' ! 

" But now life's slumberous current 
No sun-bowed cascade wakes ; 
No tall, heroic manhood 
The level dulness breaks. 

" Oh for a knight like Bayard, 
Without reproach or fear ! 
My light glove on his casque of steel, 
My love-knot on his spear ! " 

Then I said, my own heart throbbing 
To the time her proud pulse beat, 
" Life hath its regal natures yet. 
True, tender, brave, and sweet ! 

" Smile not, fair unbeliever ! 
One man, at least, I know, 
Who might wear the crest of Bayard 
Or Sidney's plume of snow. 



RANTOUL 



193 



" Once, when over purple mountains 


" But dream not helm and harness 


Died away the Grecian sun, 


The sign of valor true ; 


And the far Cyllenian ranges 


Peace hath higher tests of manhood 


Paled and darkened, one by one, — 


Than battle ever knew. 


"Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, 


" Woiddst know him now ? Behold him, 


Cleaving all the quiet sky, 


The Cadmus of the blind. 


And against his sharp steel lightnings 


Giving the dumb lip language, 


Stood the Suliote but to die. 


The idiot-clay a mind. 


« Woe for the weak and halting ! 


" Walking his round of duty 


The crescent blazed behind 


Serenely day by day. 


A curving line of sabres. 


With the strong man's hand of labor 


Like fire before the wind ! 


And childhood's heart of play. 


" Last to fly, and first to rally, 


" True as the knights of story. 


Rode he of whom I speak, 


Sir Lancelot and his peers. 


When, groaning in his bridle-path, 


Brave in his calm endurance 


Sank down a wounded Greek. 


As they in tilt of spears. 


" With the rich Albanian costume 


" As waves in stillest waters, 


Wet with many a ghastly stain, 


As stars in noonday skies. 


Gazing on earth and sky as one 


All that wakes to noble action 


Who might not gaze again ! 


In his noon of calmness lies. 


" He looked forward to the mountains, 


" Wherever outraged Nature 


Back on foes that never spare, 


Asks word or action brave, 


Then flung him from his saddle, 


Wherever struggles labor. 


And placed the stranger there. 


Wherever groans a slave, — 


« ' Allah ! hu ! ' Through flashing sabres, 


" Wherever rise the peoples, 


Through a stormy hail of lead, 


Wherever sinks a throne. 


The good Thessalian charger 


The throbbing heart of Freedom finds 


Up the slopes of olives sped. 


An answer in his own. 


" Hot spurred the turbaned riders ; 


" Knight of a better era. 


He almost felt their breath. 


Without reproach or fear ! 


Where a mountain stream rolled darkly 


Said I not well that Bayards 


down 


And Sidneys still are here ? " 


Between the hills and death. 




" One brave and manful struggle, — 


RANTOUL 


He gained the solid land. 




And the cover of the mountains. 


No more fitting inscription could be placed 


And the carbines of his band ! " 


on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul than this : 




" He died at his post in Congress, and his last 


" It was very great and noble," 
Said the moist-eyed listener then, 


words were a protest in the name of Democracy 
against the Fugitive -Slave Law." 


" But one brave deed makes no hero ; 


One day, along the electric wire 


Tell me what he since hath been ! " 


His manly word for Freedom sped ; 




We came next morn : that tongue of fire 


" Still a brave and generous manhood, 


Said only, " He who spake is dead ! " 


Still an honor without stain, 




In the prison of the Kaiser, 


Dead ! while his voice was living yet. 


By the barricades of Seine. 


In echoes round the pillared dome ! 



194 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Dead ! while his blotted page lay wet 
With themes of state and loves of home ! 

Dead ! in that crowning grace of time, 
That triumph of life's zenith hour ! 

Dead ! while we watched his manhood's 
prime 
Break from the slow bud into flower ! 

Dead ! he so great, and strong, and wise, 
While the mean thousands yet drew 
breath ; 

How deepened, through that dread surprise, 
The mystery and the awe of death ! 

From the high place whereon our votes 
Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, fell 

His first words, like the prelude notes 
Of some great anthem yet to swell. 

We seemed to see our flag unfurled, 
Our champion waiting in his place 

For the last battle of the world. 
The Armageddon of the race. 

Through him we hoped to speak the word 
Which wins the freedom of a land ; 

And lift, for human right, the sword 

Which dropped from Hampden's dying 
hand. 

For he had sat at Sidney's feet, 

And walked with Pym and Vane apart ; 
And, through the centuries, felt the beat 

Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's 
heart. 

He knew the paths the worthies held. 
Where England's best and wisest trod ; 

And, lingering, drank the springs that 
welled 
Beneath the touch of Milton's rod. 

No wild enthusiast of the right, 

Self-poised and clear, he showed alway 

The coolness of his northern night. 
The ripe repose of autumn's day. 

His steps were slow, yet forward still 
He pressed where others paused or failed ; 

The calm star clomb with constant will. 
The restless meteor flashed and paled ! 

Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew 
And owned the higher ends of Law ; 



Still rose majestic on his view 

The awful Shape the schoolman saw. 

Her home the heart of God ; her voice 
The choral harmonies whereby 

The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice, 
The rhythmic rule of earth and sky ! 

We saw his great powers misapplied 
To poor ambitions ; yet, through all, 

We saw him take the weaker side, 

And right the wronged, and free the 
thrall. 

Now, looking o'er the frozen North, 
For one like him in word and act. 

To call her old, free spirit forth, 

And give her faith the life of fact, — 

To break her party bonds of shame. 
And labor with the zeal of him 

To make the Democratic name 
Of Liberty the synonyme, — 

We sweep the land from hill to strand, 
We seek the strong, the wise, the brave, 

And, sad of heart, return to stand 
In silence by a new-made grave ! 

There, where his breezy hills of home 
Look out upon liis sail-white seas. 

The sounds of winds and waters come. 
And shape themselves to words like 
these: 

" Why, murmuring, mourn that he, wbr>3e 
power 

Was lent to Party over-long. 
Heard the still whisper at the hour 

He set his foot on Party wrong ? 

" The human life that closed so well 
No lapse of folly now can stain : 

The lips whence Freedom's protest fell 
No meaner thought can now profane. 

" Mightier than living voice his grave 

That lofty protest utters o'er ; 
Through roaring wind and smiting wave 

It speaks his hate of wrong once more. 

" Men of the North ! your weak regret 

Is wasted here ; arise and pay 
To freedom and to him your debt. 

By following where he led the way ! " 



WILLIAM FORSTER 



195 



WILLIAM FORSTER 

William Forster, of Norwich, England, died 
in East Tennessee, in the 1st month, 1854, while 
engaged in presenting to the governors of the 
States of this Union the address of his religious 
society on the evils of slavery. He was the 
relative and coadjutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, 
and Frys ; and his whole life, extending almost 
to threescore and ten years, was a pure and 
beautiful example of Christian benevolence. 
He had travelled over Europe, and visited most 
of its sovereigns, to plead against the slave- 
trade and slavery ; and had twice before made 
visits to this country, under impressions of re- 
ligious duty. He was the father of the Right 
Hon. William Edward Forster. He visited my 
father's house in Haverhill during his first tour 
in the United States. 

The years are many since his hand 

Was laid upon my head, 
Too weak and young to understand 

The serious words he said. 

Yet often now the good man's look 

Before me seems to swim, 
As if some inward feeling took 

The outward guise of him. 

As if, in passion's heated war, 
Or near temptation's charm, 

Through him the low-voiced monitor 
Forewarned me of the harm. 

Stranger and pilgrim ! from that day 

Of meeting, first and last, 
Wherever Duty's pathway lay, 

His reverent steps have passed. 

The poor to feed, the lost to seek, 

To proffer life to death, 
Hope to the erring, — to the weak 

The strength of his own faith. 

To plead the captive's right ; remove 
The sting of hate from Law ; 

And soften in the fire of love 
The hardened steel of Wax. 

He walked the dark world, in the mild. 
Still guidance of the Light ; 

In tearful tenderness a child, 
A strong man in the right. 



From what great perils, on his way, 
He foimd, in prayer, release ; 

Tlirough what abysmal shadows lay 
His pathway unto peace, 

God knoweth : we could only see 
The tranquil strength he gained ; 

Tlie bondage lost in liberty. 
The fear in love unfeigned. 

And I, — my youthful fancies grown 

The habit of the man, 
Whose field of life by angels sown 

The wilding vines o'errau, — 

Low bowed in silent gratitude. 

My manhood's heart enjoys 
That reverence for the pure and good 

Which blessed the dreaming boy's. 

Still shines the light of holy lives 

Like star-beams over doubt ; 
Each sainted memory. Christlike, drives 

Some dark possession out. 

O friend ! O brother ! not in vain 

Thy life so calm and true, 
The silver dropping of the rain, 

The fall of summer dew ! 

How many burdened hearts have prayed 
Their lives like thine might be ! 

But more shall pray henceforth for aid 
To lay them down like thee. 

With weary hand, yet steadfast will. 

In old age as in youth. 
Thy Master found thee sowing still 

The good seed of His truth. 

As on thy task-field closed the day 

In golden-skied decline, 
His angel met thee on the way, 

And lent his arm to thine. 

Thy latest care for man, — thy last 
Of earthly thought a prayer, — 

Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast, 
Is worthy now to wear ? 

Methinks the mound which marks thy bed 
]\Iight bless our land and save. 

As rose, of old, to life the dead 
Who touched the prophet's grave ! 



t96 



PERSONAL POEMS 



TO CHARLES SUMNER 

If I have seemed more prompt to censure 

wrong 
Than praise the right ; if seldom to thine 

ear 
My voice hath mingled with the exultant 

cheer 
Borne upon all our Northern winds along ; 
If I have failed to join the fickle throng 
In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest 

strong 
In victory, surprised in thee to find 
Brougham's scathing power with Canning's 

grace combined ; 
That he, for whom the ninefold Muses 

sang, 
From their twined arms a giant athlete 

sprang, 
Barbing the arrows of his native tongue 
With the spent shafts Latona's archer 

flung. 
To smite the Python of our land and 

time. 
Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime, 
Like the blind bard who in Castalian 

springs 
Tempered the steel that clove the crest of 

kings. 
And on the shrine of England's freedom 

laid 
The gifts of Cumse and of Delphi's shade, — 
Small need hast thou of words of praise 

from me. 
Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and 

well canst guess 
That, even though silent, I have not the 

less 
Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree 
With the large future which I shaped for 

thee. 
When, years ago, beside the summer sea, 
White in the moon, we saw the long waves 

fall 
Baffled and broken from the rocky wall. 
That, to the menace of the brawling flood, 
Opposed alone its massive quietude. 
Calm as a fate ; with not a leaf nor vine 
Nor birch-spray trembling in the still 

moonshine, 
Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes 

think 
That night - scene by the sea prophet- 
ical 



(For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs, 
And through her pictures human fate 

divines), 
That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows 

sink 
In murmuring rout, uprising clear and 

tall 
In the white light of heaven, the type of 

one 
Who, momently by Error's host assailed, 
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of 

granite mailed ; 
And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all 
The tumult, hears the angels say, Well 

done ! 

BURNS 

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN 
BLOSSOM 

No more these simple flowers belong 

To Scottish maid and lover ; 
Sown in the common soil of song, 

They bloom the wide world over. 

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, 

The minstrel and the heather, 
The deathless singer and the flowers 

He sang of live together. 

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns ! 

The moorland flower and peasant ! 
How, at their mention, memory turns 

Her pages old and pleasant ! 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning. 
And manhood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning. 

The dews that washed the dust and soil 
From off the wings of pleasure. 

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil 
With golden threads of leisure. 

I call to mind the summer day, 

The early harvest mowing. 
The sky with sun and clouds at play, 

And flowers with breezes blowing. 

I hear the blackbird in the corn, 

The locust in the haying ; 
And, like the fabled hunter's horn, 

Old tunes my heart is playing. 



BURNS 



'97 



How oft that day, with fond delay, 

I sought the maple's shadow. 
And sang with Burns the hours away, 

Forgetful of the meadow ! 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 

I heard the squirrels leaping. 
The good dog listened while I read. 

And wagged his tail iu keeping. 

I watched him while in sportive mood 
I read " The Twa Dogs' " story, 

And half believed he understood 
The poet's allegory. 

Sweet day, sweet songs ! The golden hours 
Grew brighter for that singing, 

From brook and bird and meadow flowers 
A dearer welcome bringing. 

New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 

New glory over Woman ; 
And daily life and duty seemed 

No longer poor and common. 

I woke to find the simple truth 

Of fact and feeling better 
Than all the dreams that held my youth 

A still repining debtor : 

That Nature gives her handmaid. Art, 
The themes of sweet discoursing ; 

The tender idyls of the heart 
In every tongue rehearsing. 

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, 

Of loving knight and lady, 
When farmer boy and barefoot girl 

Were wandering there already ? 

I saw through all familiar things 

The romance underlying ; 
The joys and griefs that plume the wings 

Of Fancy skyward flying. 

I saw the same blithe day return, 

The same sweet fall of even, 
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, 

And sank on crystal Devon. 

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills 
The sweetbrier and the clover ; 

With Ayr and Doon, my native rills. 
Their wood hymns chanting over. 



O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising ; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing ! 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of life among the lowly ; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own more holy. 

And if at times an evil strain, 

To lawless love appealing. 
Broke in upon the sweet refrain 

Of pure and healthful feeling, 

It died upon the eye and ear, 

No inward answer gaining ; 
No heart had I to see or hear 

The discord and the staining. 

Let those who never erred forget 
His worth, in vain bewailiugs ; 

Sweet Soul of Song ! I own my debt 
Uncancelled by his failings ! 

Lament who will the ribald line 
Which tells his lapse from duty, 

How kissed the maddening lips of wine 
Or wanton ones of beauty ; 

But think, while falls that shade between 

The erring one and Heaven, 
That he who loved like Magdalen, 

Like her may be forgiven. 

Not his the song whose thunderous chime 

Eternal echoes render ; 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 

And Milton's starry splendor ! 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 

To love a tribute dearer ? 

Through all his tuneful art, how strong 

The human feeling gushes ! 
The very moonlight of his song 

Is warm with smiles and blushes ! 

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 
So " Bonnie Doon " but tarry ; 

Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, 
But spare his Highland Mary ! 



[98 



PERSONAL POEMS 



TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER 

So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame, 
Tekoa's prophet - berdsnian smote with 

blame 
The traffickers in men, and put to shame. 

All earth and heaven before. 
The sacerdotal robbers of the poor. 

All the dread Scripture lives for thee again, 
To smite like lightning on the hands profane 
Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain. 

Once more the old Hebrew tongue 
Bends with tlie shafts of God a bow new- 
strung ! 

Take up the mantle which the prophets 

wore ; 
Warn with their warnings, show the Christ 

once more 
Bound, scourged, and crucified in His 

blameless poor ; 
And shake above our land 
The unquenched bolts 4iat blazed in Hosea's 

hand ! 

Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years 
The solemn burdens of the Orient seers. 
And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears. 

Mightier was Luther's word 
Thau Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's 
sword ! 



TO JAMES T. FIELDS 

ON A BLANK LEAF OF " POEMS PRINTED, 
NOT published" 

Well thought ! who would not rather hear 
The songs to Love and Friendship sung 
Than those which move the stranger's 
tongue. 

And feed his unselected ear ? 

Our social joys are more than fame ; 

Life withers in the public look. 

Why mount the pillory of a book, 
Or barter comfort for a name ? 

Who in a house of glass would dwell. 
With curious eyes at every pane ? 
To ring him in and out again, 

Who wants the public crier's bell ? 



To see the angel in one's way. 

Who wants to play the ass's part, — 
Bear on his back the wizard Art, 

And iu his service speak or bray ? 

And who his manly locks would shave, 
And quench the eyes of common sense, 
To share the noisy recompense 

That mocked the shorn and blinded slave? 

The heart has needs beyond the head, 
And, starving in the plenitude 
Of strange gifts, craves its common 
food, — 

Our human nature's daily bread. 

We are but men : no gods are we, 
To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, 
Each separate, on his painful peak, 

Thin-cloaked iu self-complacency ! 

Better his lot whose axe is swung 

In Wartburg's woods, or that poor girl's 
Who by the Ilm her spindle whirls 

And sings the songs that Luther sung, 

Than his who, old, and cold, and vain. 
At Weimar sat, a demigod. 
And bowed with Jove's imperial nod 

His votaries in and out again ! 

Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet ! 

Ambition, hew thy rocky stair ! 

Who envies him who feeds on air 
The icy splendor of his seat ? 

I see your Alps, above me, cut 

The dark, cold sky ; and dim and lone 
I see ye sitting, — stone on stone, — 

With human senses dulled and shut. 

I could not reach you, if I would, 
Nor sit among your cloudy shapes ; 
And (spare the fable of the grapes 

And fox) I would not if I could. 

Keep to your lofty pedestals ! 
The safer plain below I choose : 
Who never wins can rarely lose, 

Who never climbs as rarely falls. 

Let such as love the eagle's scream 
Divide with him his home of ice : 
For me shall gentler notes suffice, — 

The valley-song of bird and stream ; 



IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE 



199 



The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, 
The flail-beat chiming far away, 
The cattle-low, at shut of day, 

The voice of God in leaf and breeze ! 

Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, 
And help me to the vales below, 
(lu truth, I have not far to go,) 

Where sweet with flowers the fields extend. 



THE MEMORY OF BURNS 

Read at the Boston celebration of the hun- 
dredth anniversary of the birth of Robert 
Burns, 25th 1st mo., 1859. In my absence 
these lines were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

How sweetly come the holy psalms 

From saints and martyrs down. 
The waving of triumphal palms 

Above the thorny crown ! 
The choral praise, the chanted prayers 

From harps by angels strung, 
The hunted Cameron's mountain airs, 

The hymns that Luther sung ! 

Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes, 

The sounds of earth are heard, 
As through the open minster floats 

The song of breeze and bird ! 
Not less the wonder of the sky 

That daisies bloom below ; 
The brook sings on, though loud and high 

The cloudy organs blow ! 

And, if the tender ear be jarred 

That, haply, hears by turns 
The saintly harp of Olney's bard, 

The pastoral pipe of Burns, 
No discord mars His perfect plan 

Who gave them both a tongue ; 
For he who sings the love of man 

The love of God hath sung ! 

To-day be every fault forgiven 

Of him in whom we joy ! 
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven 

And leave the earth's alloy. 
Be ours his music as of spring. 

His sweetness as of flowers, 
The songs the bard himself might sing 

In holier ears than ours. 

Sweet airs of love and home, the hum 

Of household melodies, 
Come singing, as the robins come 



To sing in door-yard trees. 
And, heart to heart, two nations lean, 

No rival wreaths to twine. 
But blending in eternal green 

The holly and the pine ! 



IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH 
STURGE 

In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's 
mountains, 
Across the charmed bay 
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver 
fountains 
Perpetual holiday, 

A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten, 
His gold-bought masses given ; 

And Rome's great altar smokes with gums 
to sweeten 
Her foulest gift to Heaven, 

And while all Naples thrills with mute 
thanksgiving, 
The court of England's queen 
For the dead monster so abhorred while 
living 
In mourning garb is seen. 

With a true sorrow God rebukes that feign- 
ing ; 

By lone Edgbaston's side 
Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining. 

Bareheaded and wet-eyed ! 

Silent for once the restless hive of labor, 
Save the low funeral tread, 

Or voice of craftsman whispering to his 
neighbor 
The good deeds of the dead. 

For him no minster's chant of the immor- 
tals 
Rose from the lips of sin ; 
No mitred priest swung back the heavenly 
portals 
To let the white soul in. 

But Age and Sickness framed their tearful 
faces 
In the low hovel's door. 
And prayers went up from all the dark by- 
places 
And Ghettos of the poor. 



PERSONAL POEMS 



The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, 
The vagrant of the street, 

The human dice wherewith in games of 
battle 
The lords of earth compete. 

Touched with a grief that needs no outward 
draping, 
All swelled the long lament, 
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, 
shaping 
His viewless monument ! 

For never yet, with ritual pomp and splen- 
dor, 
In the long heretofore, 
A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and 
tender, 
Has England's turf closed o'er. 

And if there fell from out her grand old 
steeples 
No crash of brazen wail, 
The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, 
and peoples 
Swept in on evei'y gale. 

It came from Holstein's birchen-belted 
meadows. 

And from the tropic calms 
Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shadows 

Of Occidental palms ; 

From the locked roadsteads of the Bothnian 
peasants, 
And harbors of the Finn, 
Where war's worn victims saw his gentle 
presence 
Come sailing, Christ-like, in. 

To seek the lost, to build the old waste 
places, 
To link the hostile shores 
Of severing seas, and sow with England's 
daisies 
The moss of Finland's moors. 

Thanks for the good man's beautiful ex- 
ample, 

Who in the vilest saw 
Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple 

Still vocal with God's law ; 

And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing 
As from its prison cell, 



Praying for pity, like the mournful cry- 
ing 
Of Jonah out of hell. 

Not his the golden pen's or lip's persua- 
sion, 
But a fine sense of right, 
And Truth's directness, meeting each occa- 
sion 
Straight as a line of light. 

His faith and works, like streams that in- 
termingle. 
In the same channel ran : 
The crystal clearness of an eye kept sin- 
gle 
Shamed all the frauds of man. 

The very gentlest of all human natures 
He joined to courage strong. 

And love outreaching unto all God's crea- 
tures 
With sturdy hate of wrong. 

Tender as woman, manliness and meek- 
ness 
In him were so allied 
That they who judged him by his strength 
or weakness 
Saw but a single side. 

Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal 
seemed nourished 
By failure and by fall ; 
Still a large faith in Immau-kind he cher- 
ished, 
And in God's love for all. 

And now he rests : his greatness and his 
swe,etness 
No more shall seem at strife. 
And death has moulded into calm complete- 
ness 
The statue of his life. 

Where the dews glisten and the songbirds 
warble, 
His dust to dust is laid. 
In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of 
marble 
To shame his modest shade. 

The forges glow, the hammers all are ring- 
ing ; 
Beneath its smoky veil, 



NAPLES 



Hard by, the city of his love is swinging 
Its clamorous iron flail. 

But round his grave a.re quietude and beauty, 
And the sweet heaven above, — 

The fitting symbols of a life of duty 
Transfigured into love ! 



BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his 

dying day : 
" I will not have to shrive my soul a priest 

in Slavery's pay. 
But let some poor slave-mother whom I 

have striven to free, 
With her children, from the gallows-stair 

put up a prayer for me ! " 

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him 

out to die ; 
And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her little 

child pressed nigh. 
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and 

the old harsh face grew mild. 
As he stooped between the jeering ranks and 

kissed the negro's child ! 

The shadows of his stormy life that moment 
fell apart ; 

And they who blamed the bloody hand for- 
gave the loving heart. 

That kiss from all its guilty means re- 
deemed the good intent, 

And round the grisly fighter's hair the mar- 
tyr's aureole bent ! 

Perish with him the folly that seeks through 

evil good ! 
Long live the generous purpose unstained 

with human blood ! 
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the 

thought which underlies ; 
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the 

Christian's sacrifice. 

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the North- 
ern rifle hear, 

Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on 
the negro's spear. 

But let the free-winged angel Truth their 
guarded passes scale. 

To teach that right is more than might, and 
justice more than mail ! 



So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in 

array ; 
In vain her trampling squadrons knead the 

winter snow with clay. 
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she 

dares not harm the dove ; 
And every gate she bars to Hate shall open 



wide to Love ! 



NAPLES 



INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, 
OF BOSTON 

Helen Waterston died at Naples in her 
eighteenth year, and lies buried in the Prot- 
estant cemetery there. The stone over her 
grave bears the lines. 

Fold her, O Father, in Thine arms, 

And let her henceforth be 
A messenger of love between 

Our human hearts and Thee. 

I GIVE thee joy ! — I know to thee 

The dearest spot on earth must be 

Where sleeps thy loved one by the summer 



Where, near her sweetest poet's tomb. 
The land of Virgil gave thee room 
To lay thy flower with her perpetual bloom. 

I know that when the sky shut down 
Behind thee on the gleaming town, 
On Baise's baths and Posilippo's crown ; 

And, through thy tears, the mocking 

day 
Burned Isehia's mountain lines away. 
And Capri melted in its sunny bay ; 

Through thy great farewell sorrow shot 
The sharp pang of a bitter thought 
That slaves must tread around that holy 
spot. 

Thou knewest not the land was blest 
In giving thy beloved rest. 
Holding the fond hope closer to her breast 

That every sweet and saintly grave 
Was freedom's prophecy, and gave 
The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and 
save. 



PERSONAL POEMS 



• That pledge is answered. To thy ear 
The unchained city sends its cheer, 
And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of fear 

Ring Victor in. The land sits free 
And happy by the summer sea, 
And Bourbon Naples now is Italy ! 

: She smiles above her broken chain 

The languid smile that follows pain. 
Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun 
again. 

Oh, joy for all, who hear her call 
From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall 
And Elmo's towers to freedom's carnival ! 

A new life breathes among her vines 
And olives, like the breath of pines 
Blown downward from the breezy Apen- 
nines. 

Lean, O my friend, to meet that breath, 
Rejoice as one who witnesseth 
Beauty from ashes rise, and life from death! 

Thy sorrcv shall no more be pain, 
Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain. 
Writing the grave with flowers : " Arisen 
again ! " 



A MEMORIAL 

Moses Austin Cartland, a dear friend and re- 
lation, who led a faithful life as a teacher, and 
died in the summer of 1863. 

Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing, 

The solemn vista to the tomb 
Must know henceforth another shadow, 

And give another cypress room. 

In love surpassing that of brothers, 

We walked, O friend, from childhood's 
day; 

And, looking back o'er fifty summers. 
Our footprints track a common way. 

One in our faith, and one our longing 
To make the world within our reach 

Somewhat the better for our living, 
And gladder for our human speech. 

Thou heard'st with me the far-oflf voices. 
The old beguiling song of fame, 



But life to thee was warm and present, 
And love was better than a name. 

To homely joys and loves and friendships 
Thy genial nature fondly clung ; 

And so the shadow on the dial 

Ran back and left thee always young. 

And who could blame the generous weak- 
ness 

Which, only to thyself unj\ist, 
So overprized the worth of others, 

And dwarfed thy own with self-distrust ? 

All hearts grew; warmei in the presence 
Of one who, seeking not his own. 

Gave freely for the love of giving, 
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. 

Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude 
Of generous deeds and kindl}' words ; 

In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers, 
Open to sunrise and the birds ! 

The task was thine to mould and fashion 
Life's plastic newness into grace : 

To make the boyish heart heroic. 

And light with thought the maiden's 
face. 

O'er all the land, in town and prairie, 
With bended heads of mourning, stand 

The living forms that owe their beauty 
And fitness to thy shaping hand. 

Thy call has come in ripened manhood, 
The noonday calm of heart and mind, 

While I, who dreamed of thy remaining 
To mourn me, linger still behind : 

Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding, 
A debt of love still due from me, — 

The vain remembrance of occasions. 
Forever lost, of serving thee. 

It was not mine among thy kindred 
To join the silent funeral prayers, 

But ail that long sad day of summer 

My tears of mourning dropped with 
theirs. 

All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow, 
The birds forgot their merry trills : 

All day I heard the pines lamenting 
With thine upon thy homestead hills. 



LINES ON A FLY-LEAF 



203 



Green be those hillside pines forever, 
And green the meadowy lowlands be, 

And green the old memorial beeches, 
Nauie-carven in the woods of Lee ! 

Still let them greet thy life companions 
Who thither turn their pilgrim feet. 

In every mossy line recalling 
A tender memory sadly sweet. 

O friend ! if thought and sense avail not 
To know thee henceforth as thou art, 

That all is well with thee forever 
I trust the instincts of my heart. 

Thine be the quiet habitations, 

Thine the gi-een pastures, blossom-sown, 
And smiles of saintly recognition. 

As sweet and tender as thy own. 

Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow 
To meet us, but to thee we come. 

With thee we never can be strangers. 
And where thou art must still be home. 



BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY 

Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 
3, 1864, was celebrated by a festival to which 
these verses were sent. 

We praise not now the poet's art, 
The rounded beauty of his song ; 

Who weighs him from his life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

Not for the eye, familiar grown 

With charms to common sight denied, — 
The marvellous gift he shares alone 

With him who walked on Rydal-side ; 

Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for 
tears ; 

We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years. 

When Peace brings Freedom in her train. 
Let happy lips his songs rehearse ; 

His life is now his noblest strain, 
His manhood better than his verse ! 

Thank God ! his hand on Nature's keys 
Its cimning keeps at life's full span ; 



But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like 
these. 
The poet seems beside the man ! 

So be it ! let the garlands die, 

The singer's wreath, the painter's meed, 
Let our names perish, if thereby 

Our coimtry may be saved and freed ! 



THOMAS STARR KING 

Published originally as a prelude to the post- 
humous volume of selections edited by Richard 
Frothingham. 

The great work laid upon his twoscore years 
Is done, and well done. If we drop our 

tears, 
Who loved him as few men were ever loved, 
We moui"n no blighted hope nor broken plan 
With him whose life stands roimded and 

approved 
In the full growth and stature of a man- 
Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope. 
With your deep toll a sound of faith and 

hope ! 
Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way 

down, 
From thousand-masted bay and steepled 

town ! 
Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell 
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell 
That the brave sower saw his ripened grain. 
O East and West ! O morn and sunset 

twain 
No more forever ! — has he lived in vain 
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and 

told 
Your bridal service from his lips of gold ? 



LINES ON A FLY-LEAF 

[Suggested by the book A New Atmosphere, 
by Gail Hamilton. The other friends referred 
to in the lines are Lydia Maria Child, Grace 
Greenwood, Aima E. Dickinson and Mrs. 

Stowe.] 

I NEED not ask thee, for my sake, 
To read a book which well may make 
Its way by native force of wit 
W^ithout my manual sign to it. 
Its piquant writer needs from me 
No gravely masculine guaranty, 



204 



PERSONAL POEMS 



And well might laugh her merriest laugh 

At broken spears in her behalf ; 

Yet, spite of all the critics tell, 

I frankly own I like her well. 

It may be that she wields a pen 

Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men, 

That her keen arrows search and try 

The armor joints of dignity, 

And, though alone for error meant, 

Sing through the air irreverent. 

I blame her not, the young athlete 

Who plants her woman's tiny feet. 

And dares the chances of debate 

Where bearded men might hesitate, 

Who, deeply earnest, seeing well 

The ludicrous and laughable. 

Mingling in eloquent excess 

Her anger and her tenderness. 

And, chiding with a half-caress. 

Strives, less for her own sex than ours, 

AVith principalities and powers, 

And points us upward to the clear 

Sunned heights of her new atmosphere. 

Heaven mend her faults ! — I will not pause 

To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, 

Or waste my pity when some fool 

Provokes her measureless ridicule. 

Strong-minded is she ? Better so 

Than dulness set for sale or sliow, 

A household folly, capped and belled 

In fashion's dance of puppets held. 

Or poor pretence of womanhood. 

Whose formal, flavorless platitude 

Is warranted from all offence 

Of robust meaning's violence. 

Give me the wine of thought whose bead 

Sparkles along the page I read, — 

Electric words in which I find 

The tonic of the northwest wind ; 

The wisdom which itself allies 

To sweet and pure humanities. 

Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong. 

Are underlaid by love as strong ; 

The genial play of mirth that lights 

Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights 

Of summer-time, the harmless blaze 

Of thunderless heat-lightning plays. 

And tree and hill-top resting dim 

And doubtful on the sky's vague rim. 

Touched by that soft and lambent gleam. 

Start sharply outlined from their dream. 

Talk not to me of woman's sphere. 
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer, 



Nor wrong the manliest saint of all 
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul 
Would own the heroines who have lent 
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament. 
Foregone the praise to woman sweet. 
And cast their crowns at Duty's feet ; 
Like her, who by her strong Appeal 
Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel, 
Who, earliest summoned to withstand 
The color-madness of the land. 
Counted her life-long losses gain, 
And made her own her sisters' pain ; 
Or her who, in her greenwood shade. 
Heard the sharp call that Freedom made, 
And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre 
Of love the Tyrtaean carmen's fire : 
Or that young girl, — Domr^my's maid 
Revived a nobler cause to aid, — 
Shaking from warning finger-tips 
The doom of her apocalypse ; 
Or her, who world-wide entrance gave 
To the log-cabin of the slave. 
Made all his want and sorrow known, 
And all earth's languages his own. 



GEORGE L. STEARNS 

No man rendered greater service to the 
cause of Freedom than Major Stearns in the 
great strugg-le between invading slave-holders 
and the free settlei-s of Kansas. 

He has done the work of a true man, — 
Crown him, honor him, love him. 

Weep over him, tears of woman. 
Stoop manliest brows above him ! 

O dusky mothers and daughters, 
Vigils of mourning keep for him ! 

Up in the momitains, and down by the 
waters, 
Lift up your voices and weep for him ! 

For the warmest of hearts is frozen. 

The freest of hands is still ; 
And the gap in our picked and chosen 

The long years may not fill. 

No duty could overtask him. 

No need his will outrun ; 
Or ever our lips could ask him, 

His hands the work had done. 

He forgot his own soul for others. 
Himself to his neighbor lending ; 



TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD 



205 



He found the Lord in his suffering brothers, 
And not in the clouds descending. 

So the bed was sweet to die on, 

Whence he saw the doors wide swung 

Against whose bolted iron 

The strength of his life was flung. 

And he saw ere his eye was darkened 
The sheaves of the harvest-bringing, 

And knew while his ear yet hearkened 
The voice of the reapers singing. 

Ah, well ! The world is discreet ; 

There are plenty to pause and wait ; 
But here was a man who set his feet 

Sometimes in advance of fate ; 

Plucked off the old bark when the inner 

Was slow to renew it. 
And put to the Lord's work the simier 

When saints failed to do it. 

Never rode to the wrong's redressing 

A worthier paladin. 
Shall he not hear the blessing, 

" Good and faithful, enter in ! " 



GARIBALDI 

In trance and dream of old, God's prophet 
saw 

The casting down of thrones. Thou, 
watching lone 

The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled. 

Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky 
zone 
With foam, the slow waves gather and 
withdraw, 

Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled. 

And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with 
a sound 

Of falling chains, as, one by one, un- 
bound. 
The nations lift their right hands up and 
swear 

Their oath of freedom. From the chalk- 
white wall 
Of England, from the black Carpathian 
range. 

Along the Danube and the Theiss, 
through all 

The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, 



And from the Seine's thronged banks, a 
miirmur strange 
And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer 
seas 
On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening 
hair, — 
The song of freedom's bloodless victories ! 
Rejoice, O Garibaldi ! Though thy sword 
Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed 

vainly poured 
Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel 
Of France wrought murder with the arms 
of hell 
On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly 
dead, 
Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban. 
Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican, 
And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed ! 
God's providence is not blind, but, full of 

eyes. 
It searches all the refuges of lies ; 
And in His time and way, the accursed 
things 
Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage 
Has clashed defiance from hot youth to 
age 
Shall perish. All men shall be priests and 
kings. 
One royal brotherhood, one church made 

free 
By love, which is the law of liberty ! 



TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD 

ON READING HER POEM IN " THE STAN- 
DARD " 

Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, 
"Again the trees are clothed in vernal green," 
May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis 
Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them 
for some years afterward, when I first read 
them, or I eoidd not have made the reference 
which I did to the extinction of slavery. 

The sweet spring day is glad with music, 
But through it sounds a sadder strain ; 

The worthiest of our narrowing circle 
Sings Loring's dirges o'er again. 

O woman greatly loved ! I join thee 
In tender memories of our friend ; 

With thee across the awful spaces 
The greeting of a soul I send I 



!o6 



PERSONAL POEMS 



What cheer hath he ? How is it with him ? 

Where lingers he this weary while ? 
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven 

Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile ? 

Does he not know our feet are treading 
The earth hard down on Slavery's grave ? 

That, in our crowning exultations, 

We miss the charm his presence gave ? 

Why on this spring air comes no whisper 
From him to tell us all is well ? 

Why to our flower-time comes no token 
Of lily and of asphodel ? 

I feel the unutterable longing. 
Thy hunger of the heart is mine ; 

I reach and grope for hands in darkness, 
My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. 

Still on the lips of all we question 
The finger of God's silence lies ; 

Will the lost hands in ours be folded ? 
Will the shut eyelids ever rise ? 

O friend ! no proof beyond this yearning, 
This outreach of our hearts, we need ; 

God will not mock the hope He giveth, 
No love He prompts shall vainly plead. 

Then let us stretch our hands in darkness, 
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er ; 

Some day their arms shall close about us, 
And the old voices speak once more. 

No dreary splendors wait our coming 
Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart ; 

Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving. 
The harvest-gathering of the heart. 



THE SINGER 

This poem was written on the death of Alice 
Cary. Her sister Phcsbe, heart-broken by her 
loss, followed soon after. Noble and richly 
gifted, lovely in person and character, they 
left behind them only friends and admirers. 

Years since (but names to me before), 
Two sisters sought at eve my door ; 
Two song-birds wandering from their nest, 
A gray old farm-house in the West. 

How fresh of life the yoimger one, 
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun I 



Her gravest mood could scarce displace 
The dimples of her nut-brown face. 

Wit sparkled on her lips not less 
For quick and tremulous tenderness ; 
And, following close her merriest glance, 
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's ro- 
mance. 

Timid and still, the elder had 
Even then a smile too sweetly sad ; 
The crown of pain that all must wear 
Too early pressed her midnight hair. 

Yet ere the summer eve grew long, 
Her modest lips were sweet with song ; 
A memory haunted all her words 
Of clover-fields and singing birds. 

Her dark, dilating eyes expressed 

The broad horizons of the west ; 

Her speech dropped prairie flowers ; the 

gold 
Of harvest wheat about her rolled. 

Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me : 

I queried not with destiny : 

1 knew the trial and the need. 

Yet, all the more, I said, God speed ! 

What could I other than I did ? 
Could I a singing-bird forbid ? 
Deny the wind-stirred leaf ? Rebuke 
The music of the forest brook ? 

She went with morning from my door, 
But left me richer than before ; 
Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, 
The welcome of her partial ear. 

Years passed : through all the land her 

name 
A pleasant household word became : 
All felt behind the singer stood 
A sweet and gracious womanhood. 

Her life was earnest work, not play ; 
Her tired feet climbed a weary way ; 
And even through her lightest strain 
We heard an undertone of pain. 

Unseen of her her fair fame grew, 
The good she did she rarely knew, 
Unguessed of her in life the love 
That rained its tears her grave above. 



HOW MARY GREW 



207 



When last I saw her, full of peace, 
She waited for her great release ; 
And that old friend so sage and bland, 
Our later Franklin, held her hand. 

For all that patriot bosoms stirs 
Had moved that woman's heart of hers, 
And men who toiled in storm and sun 
Found her their meet companion. 

Our converse, from her suffering bed 
To healthfid themes of life she led : 
The out-door world of bud and bloom 
And light and sweetness filled her room. 

Yet evermore an underthought 
Of loss to come within us wrought. 
And all the while we felt the strain 
Of the strong will that conquered pain. 

God giveth quietness at last ! 
The common way that all have passed 
She went, with mortal yearnings fond, 
To fuller life and love beyond. 

Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, 
My dear ones ! Give the singer place ! 
To you, to her, — I know not where, — 
I lift the silence of a prayer. 

For only thus our own we find ; 
The gone before, the left behind, 
All mortal voices die between ; 
The unheard reaches the unseen. 

Again the blackbirds sing ; the streams 
Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams. 
And tremble in the April showers 
The tassels of the maple flowers. 

But not for her has spring renewed 
The sweet surprises of the wood ; 
And bird and flower are lost to her 
Who was their best interpreter ! 

What to shut eyes has God revealed ? 
What hear the ears that death has 

sealed ? 
What undreamed beauty passing show 
Requites the loss of all we know ? 

silent land, to which we move, 
Enough if there alone be love, 



And mortal need can ne'er outgrow 
What it is waiting to bestow ! 

O white soul ! from that far-off shore 
Float some sweet song the waters o'er. 
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel. 
With the old voice we loved so well ! 



HOW MARY GREW 

These lines were in answer to an invitation 
to hear a lecture of Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, 
before the Boston Radical Club. The reference 
in tlie last stanza is to an essay on Sappho by 
T. W. Hig-ginson, read at the ehib the preceding 
month. 

With wisdom far beyond her years, 
And graver than her wondering peers. 
So strong, so mild, combining still 
The tender heart and queenly will, 
To conscience and to duty true, 
So, up from childhood, Mary Grew ! 

Then in her gracious womanhood 
She gave her days to doing good. 
She dared the scornful laugh of men. 
The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen. 
She did the work she found to do, — 
A Christian heroine, Mary Grew ! 

The freed slave thanks her ; blessing comes 
To her from women's weary homes ; 
The wronged and erring find in her 
Their censor mild and comforter. 
The world were safe if but a few 
Could grow in grace as Mary Grew I 

So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say, 
By this low wood-fire, ashen gray ; 
Just wishing, as the night shuts down, 
That I could hear in Boston town. 
In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, 
From her own lips, how Mary Grew ! 

And hear her graceful hostess tell 

The silver-voiced oracle 

Who lately through her parlors spoke, 

As through Dodona's sacred oak, 

A wiser truth than any told 

By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold, — 

The way to make the world anew 

Is just to grow — as Mary Grew I 



2o8 



PERSONAL POEMS 



SUMNER 

" I am not one who has disgraced beauty of 
sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the max- 
ims of a freeman by the actions of a slave ; but, 
by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsul- 
lied." — Milton's Defence of the People of 
England. 

MOTHER State ! the winds of March 
IJlew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God, 

Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch 
Of sky, thy mourning children trod. 

And now, with all thy woods in leaf, 
Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead 

Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief, 
A Rachel yet uncomforted ! 

And once again the organ swells. 

Once more the flag is half-way hung, 

And yet again the mournful bells 
In all thy steeple-towers are rung. 

And I, obedient to thy will. 

Have come a simple wreath to lay. 

Superfluous, on a grave that still 
Is sweet with all the flowers of May. 

1 take, with awe, the task assigned ; 

It may be that my friend might miss, 
In his new sphere of heart and mind, 
Some token from my hand in this. 

By many a tender memory moved. 
Along the past my thought I send ; 

The record of the cause he loved 
Is the best record of its friend. 

No trumpet sounded in his ear, 

He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame, 

But never yet to Hebrew seer 
A clearer voice of duty came. 

God said : " Break thou these yokes ; 
undo 

These heavy burdens. I ordain 
A work to last thy whole life through, 

A ministry of strife and pain. 

" Forego thy dreams of lettered ease. 
Put thou the scholar's promise by, 

The rights of man are more than these." 
He heard, and answered : " Here am I ! " 



He set his face against the blast. 
His feet against the flinty shard, 

Till the hard service grew, at last. 
Its own exceeding great reward. 

Lifted like Saul's above the crowd. 

Upon his kingly forehead fell 
The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud. 

Launched at the truth he urged so well. 

Ah ! never yet, at rack or stake, 

Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain, 

Than his, who suffered for her sake 
The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain ! 

The fixed star of his faith, through all 
Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same ; 

As through a night of storm, some tall. 
Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame. 

Beyond the dust and smoke he saw 

The sheaves of Freedom's large increase, 

The holy fanes of equal law, 
The New Jerusalem of peace. 

The weak might fear, the worldling mocb^ 
The faint and blind of heart regret ; 

All knew at last th' eternal rock 
On which his forward feet were set. 

The subtlest scheme of compromise 
Was folly to his purpose bold ; 

The strongest mesh of party lies 
Weak to the simplest truth he told. 

One language held his heart and lip. 
Straight onward to his goal he trod. 

And proved the highest statesmanship 
Obedience to the voice of God. 

No wail was in his voice, — none heard. 
When treason's storm-cloud blackest 
grew. 

The weakness of a doubtful word ; 
His duty, and the end, he knew. 

The first to smite, the first to spare ; 

When once the hostile ensigns fell. 
He stretched out hands of generous care 

To lift the foe he fought so well. 

For there was nothing base or small 
Or craven in his soul's broad plan ; 

Forgiving all things personal. 
He hated only wrong to man. 



SUMNER 



209 



The old traditions of his State, 

The memories of her great and good, 

Took from his life a fresher date, 
And in himself embodied stood. 

How felt the greed of gold and place, 
The venal crew that schemed and planned. 

The fine scorn of that haughty face, 
The spurning of that bribeless hand ! 

If than Rome's tribunes statelier 

He wore his senatorial robe. 
His lofty port was all for her, 

The one dear spot on all the globe. 

If to the master's plea he gave 

The vast contempt his manhood felt. 

He saw a brother in the slave, — 
With man as equal man he dealt. 

Proud was he ? If his presence kept 
Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod, 

As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped 
The hero and the demigod. 

None failed, at least, to reach his ear, 
Nor want nor woe appealed in vain ; 

The homesick soldier knew his cheer. 
And blessed him from his ward of pain. 

Safely his dearest friends may own 
The slight defects he never hid, 

The surface-blemish in the stone 
Of the tall, stately pyramid. 

Suffice it that he never brought 
His conscience to the public mart ; 

But lived himself the truth he taught, 
White - souled, clean-handed, pure of 
heart. 

What if he felt the natural pride 
Of power in noble use, too true 

With tHiu humilities to hide 

The work he did, the lore he knew ? 

Was he not just ? Was any wronged 
By that assured self-estimate ? 

He took but what to him belonged, 
Unenvious of another's state. 

Well might he heed the words he spake. 
And scan with care the written page 

Through which he still shall warm and wake 
The hearts of men from age to age. 



Ah ! who shall blame him now because 
He solaced thus his hours of pain ! 

Should not the o'erworn thresher pause, 
And hold to light his golden grain ? 

No sense of humor dropped its oil 
On the hard ways his purpose went ; 

Small play of fancy lightened toil ; 
He spake alone the thing he meant. 

He loved his books, the Art that hints 
A beauty veiled behind its own, 

The graver's line, the pencil's tints, 
The chisel's shape evoked from stone. 

He cherished, void of selfish ends. 
The social courtesies that bless 

And sweeten life, and loved his friends 
With most imworldly tenderness. 

But still his tired eyes rarely learned 
The glad relief by Nature brought ; 

Her mountain ranges never turned 
His current of persistent thought. 

The sea rolled chorus to his speech 

Three-banked like Latium's tall trireme, 

With laboring oars ; the grove and beach 
Were Forum and the Academe. 

The sensuous joy from all things fair 
His strenuous bent of soul repressed, 

And left from youth to silvered hair 
Few hours for pleasure, none for rest. 

For all his life was poor without, 
O Nature, make the last amends ! 

Train all thy flowers his grave about. 
And make thy singing-birds his friends ! 

Revive again, thou summer rain. 
The broken turf upon his bed ! 

Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest 
strain 
Of low, sweet music overhead ! 

With calm and beauty symbolize 

The peace which follows long annoy, 

And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes, 
Some hint of his diviner joy. 

For safe with right and truth he is. 
As God lives he must live alway ; 

There is no end for souls like his, 
No night for children of the day ! 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Nor cant nor poor solicitudes 

Made weak his life's great argument ; 
Small leisure his for frames and moods 

Who followed Duty where she went. 

The broad, fair fields of God he saw 
Beyond the bigot's narrow bound ; 

The truths he moulded into law 
In Christ's beatitudes he found. 

His state-craft was the Golden Rule, 
His right of vote a sacred trust ; 

Clear, over threat and ridicule, 

All heard his challenge : " Is it just ? " 

And when the hour supreme had come, 
Not for himself a thought he gave ; 

In that last pang of martyrdom, 

His care was for the half-freed slave. 

Not vainly dusky hands upbore, 

In prayer, the passing soul to heaven 

Whose mercy to His sutf ering poor 
Was service to the Master given. 

Long shall the good State's annals tell. 
Her children's children long be taught, 

How, praised or blamed, he guarded 
well 
The trust he neither shunned nor sought. 

If for one moment turned thy face, 
O Mother, from thy son, not long 

He waited calmly in his place 
The sure remorse which follows wrong. 

Forgiven be the State he loved 

The one brief lapse, the single blot ; 

Forgotten be the stain removed. 
Her righted record shows it not ! 

The lifted sword above her shield 

With jealous care shall guard his fame ; 

The pine-tree on her ancient field 
To all the winds shall speak his name. 

The marble image of her son 

Her loving hands shall yearly crown. 

And from her pictured Pantheon 
His grand, majestic face look down. 

State so passing rich before, 

Who now shall doubt thy highest claim ? 
The world that counts thy jewels o'er 

Shall longest pause at Sumner's name I 



THIERS 



Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to 

act 
A history stranger than his written fact, 
Him who portrayed the splendor and the 

gloom 
Of that great hour when throne and altar 

fell 
With long death-groan which still is audi- 
ble. 
He, when around the walls of Paris 

rung 
The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom, 
And every ill which follows unblest war 
Maddened all France from Finistfere to 

Var, 
The weight of fourscore from his 

shoulders flung, 
And guided Freedom in the path he saw 
Lead out of chaos into light and law. 
Peace, not imperial, but republican, 
And order pledged to all the Rights of 

Man. 



II 



Death called him from a need as immi- 
nent 
As that from which the Silent WiUiam 

went 
When powers of evil, like the smiting 

seas 
On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties. 
Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung 
The weal and woe of France, the bells were 

rung 
For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will, 
Above his bier the heai-ts of men stood 

still. 
Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn 
Of Roland wound once more to rouse and 

warn, 
The old voice filled the air ! His last brave 

word 
Not vainly France to all her boundaries 

stirred. 
Strong as in life, he still for Freedom 

wrought. 
As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 



WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT 





Alive, he loved, like all who sing, 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 


The echoes of his song ; 




Too late the tardy meed we bring, 


AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE 


The praise delayed so long. 


Among their graven shapes to whom 


Too late, alas ! Of all who knew 


Thy civic wreaths belong, 


The living man, to-day 


city of his love, make room 


Before his unveiled face, how few 


For one whose gift was song. 


Make bare their locks of gray ! 


Not his the soldier's sword to wield, 


Our lips of praise must soon be dumb, 


Nor his the helm of state, 


Our grateful eyes be dim ; 


Nor glory of the stricken field. 


brothers of the days to come, 


Nor triumph of debate. 


Take tender charge of him ! 


In common ways, with common men, 


New hands the wires of song may sweep, 


He served his race and time 


New voices challenge fame ; 


As well as if his clerkly pen 


But let no moss of years o'ercreep 


Had never danced to rhyme. 


The lines of Halleck's name. 


If, in the thronged and noisy mart, 




The Muses found their son. 


WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT 


Could any say his tuneful art 




A duty left undone ? 


Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn 




Beside her sea-blown shore; 


He toiled and sang ; and year by year 


Her well beloved, her noblest born, 


Men found their homes more sweet. 


Is hers in life no more ! 


And through a tenderer atmosphere 




Looked down the brick-walled street. 


No lapse of years can render less 




Her memory's sacred claim ; 


The Greek's wild onset Wall Street 


No fountain of forgetfuluess 


knew ; 


Can wet the lips of Fame. 


The Red King walked Broadway ; 




And Alnwick Castle's roses blew 


A grief alike to wound and heal. 


From Palisades to Bay. 


A thought to soothe and pain, 




The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel 


Fair City by the Sea ! upraise 


To her must still remain. 


,His veil with reverent hands ; 




And mingle with thy own the praise 


Good men and true she has not lacked. 


And pride of other lands. 


And brave men yet shall be ; 




The perfect flower, the crowning fact. 


Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe 


Of all her years was he ! 


Above her hero-urns ; 




And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe 


As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage. 


The flower he culled for Burns. 


What worthier knight was found 




To grace in Arthur's golden age 


Oh, stately stand thy palace walls, 


The fabled Table Round ? 


Thy tall ships ride the seas ;' 




To-day thy poet's name recalls 


A voice, the battle's trumpet-note. 


A prouder thought than these. 


To welcome and restore ; 




A hand, that all unwilling smote, 


Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat, 


To heal and build once more ! 


Nor less thy tall fleets swim, 




That shaded square and dusty street 


A soul of fire, a tender heart 


Are classic ground through him. 


Too warm for hate, he knew 



PERSONAL POEMS 



The generous victor's graceful part 
To sheathe the sword he drew. 

When Earth, as if on evil dreams, 

Looks back upon her wars, 
And the white light of Christ outstreams 

From the red disk of Mars, 

His fame who led the stormy van 

Of battle well may cease, 
But never that which crowns the man 

Whose victory was Peace. 

Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore 

Thy beautiful and brave, 
Whose failing hand the olive bore, 

Whose dying lips forgave ! 

Let age lament the youthful chief, 

And tender eyes be dim ; 
The tears are more of joy than grief 

That fall for one like him ! 



BAYARD TAYLOR 

I 

" And where now. Bayard, will thy foot- 
steps tend ? " 
My sister asked our guest one winter's 

Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet 
way 
Common to both : " Wherever thou shalt 

send ! 
What wouldst thou have me see for thee ? " 
She laughed, 
Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's 
glow : 
" Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low, 
Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft." 
" All these and more I soon shall see for 
thee ! " 
He answered cheerily : and he kept his 



On Lapland snows, the North Cape's 

windy wedge. 
And Tromso freezing in its winter sea. 
He went and came. But no man knows 

the track 
Of his last journey, and he comes not 

back ! 



II 

He brought us wonders of the new and 
old; 
We shared all climes with him. The 

Arab's tent 
To him its story-telling secret lent. 
And, pleased, we listened to the tales he 

told. 
His task, beguiled with songs that shall en- 
dure, 
In manly, honest thoroughness he 

wrought ; 
From humble home-lays to the heights 
of thought 
Slowly he climbed, but every step was 

sure. 
How, with the generous pride that friend- 
ship hath, 
We, who so loved him, saw at last the 

crown 
Of civic honor on his brows pressed down. 
Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was 
death. 
And now for him, whose praise in deaf- 
ened ears 
Two nations speak, we answer but with 
tears ! 



Ill 



O Vale of Chester ! trod by him so oft. 
Green as thy June turf keep his memory. 

Let 
Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream 
forget, 
Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedar- 
croft ; 
Let the home voices greet him in the farj 
Strange land that holds him ; let the 



Of love pursue him o'er the chartless 
seas 
And unmapped vastness of liis unknown 

star ! 
Love's language, heard beyond the loud 
discourse 
Of perishable fame, in every sphere 
Itself interprets ; and its utterance here 
Somewhere in God's unfolding universe 
Shall reach our traveller, softening the 

surprise 
Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies I 



WITHIN THE GATE 



OUR AUTOCRAT 

Read at the breakfast given in honor of Dr. 
Holmes by the publishers of the Atlantic 
Monthly, December 3, 1879. 

His laurels fresh from song and lay, 
Romance, art, science, rich in all, 

And young of heart, how dare we say 
We keep his seventieth festival ? 

No sense is here of loss or lack ; 

Before his sweetness and his light 
The dial holds its shadow back. 

The charmed hours delay their flight. 

His still the keen analysis 

Of men and moods, electric wit. 

Free play of mirth, and tenderness 
To heal the slightest wound from it. 

And his the pathos touching all 

Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 

Its hopes and fears, its final call 
And rest beneath the violets. 

His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled. 

The wisdom of the latter days. 
And tender memories of the old. 

What shapes and fancies, grave or gay, 
Before us at his bidding come ! 

The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse Shay, 
The dumb despair of Elsie's doom ! 

The tale of Avis and the Maid, 

The plea for lips that cannot speak, 

The holy kiss that Iris laid 

On Little Boston's pallid cheek ! 

Long may he live to sing for us 

His sweetest songs at evening time, 

And, like his Chambered Nautilus, 
To holier heights of beauty climb ! 

Though now unnumbered guests surround 
The table that he rules at will. 

Its Autocrat, however crowned. 

Is but our friend and comrade still. 

The world may keep his honored name, 
The wealth of all his varied powers ; 

A stronger claim has love than fame, 
And he himself is only ours ! 



WITHIN THE GATE 



I have more fully expressed ray admiration 
and regard for Lydia Maria Child in the bio- 
graphical introduction which I wrote for the 
volume of Letters, published after her death. 

We sat together, last May-day, and talked 
Of the dear friends who walked 

Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears 
Of five and forty years. 

Since first we met in Freedom's hope for- 
lorn, 
And heard her battle-horn 
Sound through the valleys of the sleeping 
North, 
Calling her children forth. 

And youth pressed forward with hope- 
lighted eyes. 

And age, with forecast wise 
Of the long strife before the triumph won, 

Girded his armor on. 

Sadly, as name by name we called the roll, 
We heard the dead-bells toll 

For the unanswering many, and we knew 
The living were the few. 

And we, who waited our own call before 

The inevitable door. 
Listened and looked, as all have done, to 
win 

Some token from within. 

No sign we saw, we heard no voices call ; 

The impenetrable wall 
Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt, 

On aU who sat without. 

Of many a hint of life beyond the veil, 

And many a ghostly tale 
Wherewith the ages spamied the gulf be- 
tween 

The seen and the unseen. 

Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to 
gain 
Solace to doubtful pain. 
And touch, with groping hands, the gar- 
ment hem 
Of truth sufficing them, 



214 



PERSONAL POEMS 



We talked ; and, turning from the sore 
uni-est 

Of an all-baffling quest, 
We thought of holy lives that from us passed 

Hopeful unto the last, 

As if they saw beyond the river of death. 

Like Him of Nazareth, 
The many mansions of the Eternal days 

Lift up their gates of praise. 

And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe, 

Methought, O friend, I saw 
In thy true life of word, and work, and 
thought 

The proof of all we sought. 

Did we not witness in the life of thee 

Lnmortal prophecy ? 
And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps 
trod 

An everlasting road ? 

Not for brief days thy generous sympathies. 

Thy scorn of seltish ease ; 
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal 

Thy strong uplift of soul. 

Than thine was never turned a fonder heart 

To nature and to art 
In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime. 

Thy Philothea's time. 

Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by. 

And for the poor deny 
Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of 
fame 

Wither in blight and blame. 

Sharing His love who holds in His embrace 

The lowliest of our race. 
Sure the Divine economy must be 

Conservative of thee ! 

For truth must live with truth, self-sacri- 
fice 

Seek out its great allies ; 
Good must find good by gravitation sure. 

And love with love endure. 

And so, since thou hast passed within the 
gate 

Wliereby awhile I wait, 
I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie : 

Thou hast not lived to die ! 



IN MEMORY 

JAMES T. FIELDS 

As a guest who may not stay 
Long and sad farewells to say 
Glides with smiling face away, 

Of the sweetness and the zest 
Of thy happy life possessed 
Thou hast left us at thy best. 

Warm of heart and clear of brain, 
Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane 
Thou hast spared us all the pain. 

Now that thou hast gone away, 
What is left of one to say 
Who was open as the day ? 

What is there to gloss or shun ? 
Save with kindly voices none 
Speak thy name beneath the sun. 

Safe thou art on every side. 
Friendship nothing finds to hide, 
Love's demand is satisfied. 

Over manly strength and worth, 
At thy desk of toil, or hearth. 
Played the lambent liglit of mirth, — 

Mirth that lit, but never burned ; 
All thy blame to pity turned ; 
Hatred thou hadst never learned. 

Every harsh and vexing thing 
At thy home-fire lost its sting ; 
Where thou wast was always spring. 

And thy perfect trust in good. 
Faith in man and womanhood. 
Chance and change and time withstood 

Small respect for cant and whine, 
Bigot's zeal and hate malign. 
Had that sunny soul of thine. 

But to thee was duty's claim 
Sacred, and thy lips became 
Reverent with one holy Name. 

Therefore, on thy unknown way. 
Go in God's peace ! We who stay 
But a little wliile delay. 



THE POET AND THE CHILDREN 



215 



Keep for us, O friend, where'er 
Thou art waiting, all that here 
Made thy earthly presence dear ; 

Something of thy pleasant past 
On a ground of wonder cast. 
In the stiller waters glassed ! 

Keep the human heart of thee ; 
Let the mortal only be 
Clothed in immortality. 

And when fall our feet as fell 

Thine upon the asphodel, 

Let thy old smile greet us well ; 

Proving in a world of bliss 
What we fondly dream in this, — 
Love is one with holiness ! 



WILSON 

Read at the Massachusetts Club on the seven- 
tieth anniversary of the birthday of Vice-Pres- 
ident Wilson, February 10, 1882. 

The lowliest born of all the land, 
He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand 

The gifts which happier boyhood claims ; 
And, tasting on a thankless soil 
The bitter bread of unpaid toil, 

He fed his soul with noble aims. 

And Nature, kindly provident, 
To him the future's promise lent ; 

The powers that shape man's destinies. 
Patience and faith and toil, he knew, 
The close horizon round him grew 

Broad with great possibilities. 

By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze 
He read of old heroic days. 

The sage's thought, the patriot's speech ; 
Uuhelped, aloue, himself he taught, 
His school the craft at which he wrought. 

His lore the book within his reach. 

He felt his country's need ; he knew 
The work her children had to do ; 

And when, at last, he heard the call 
In her behalf to serve and dare, 
Beside his senatorial chair 

He stood the unquestioned peer of 
alL 



Beyond the accident of birth 

He proved his simple manhood's worth ; 

Ancestral pride and classic grace 
Confessed the large-brained artisan. 
So clear of sight, so wise in plan 

And counsel, equal to his place. 

With glance intuitive be saw 
Through all disguise of form and law, 

And read men like an open book ; 
Fearless and firm, he never quailed 
Nor turned aside for threats, nor failed 

To do the thing he undertook. 

How wise, how brave, he was, how well 
He bore himself, let history tell 

While waves our flag o'er land and sea. 
No black thread in its warp or weft ; 
He found dissevered States, he left 

A grateful Nation, strong and free ! 



THE POET AND THE CHILDREN 

LONGFELLOW 

With a glory of winter sunshine 

Over his locks of gray. 
In the old historic mansion 

He sat on his last birthday ; 

With his books and his pleasant pictures. 
And his household and his kin, 

While a sound as of myriads singing 
From far and near stole in. 

It came from his own fair city, 

From the prairie's boundless plain, 

From the Golden Gate of sunset. 
And the cedarn woods of Maine. 

And his heart grew warm within him, 
And his moistening eyes grew dim, 

For he knew that his country's children 
Were singing the songs of him : 

The lays of his life's glad morning, 
The psalms of his evening time, 

Whose echoes shall float forever 
On the winds of every clime. 

All their beautiful consolations, 

Sent forth like birds of cheer. 
Came flocking back to his windows. 

And sang in the Poet's ear. 



2l6 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Grateful, but solemn and tender, 

The nuisic rose and fell 
With a joy akin to sadness 

And a greeting like farewell. 

With a sense of awe he listened 
To the voices sweet and young ; 

The last of earth and the first of heaven 
Seemed in the songs they sung. 

And waiting a little longer 

For the wonderful change to come, 
He heard the Summoning Angel, 

Who calls God's children home ! 

And to him in a holier welcome 
Was the mystical meaning given 

Of the words of the blessed Master : 
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven ! " 



A WELCOME TO LOWELL 

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, 
Our hearts are all thy own ; 

To-day we bid thee welcome 
Not for ourselves alone. 

In the long years of thy absence 

Some of us have grown old. 
And some have passed the portals 

Of the Mystery untold ; 

For the hands that cannot clasp thee, 
For the voices that are dumb. 

For each and all I bid thee 
A grateful welcome home ! 

For Cedarcroft's sweet singer 
To the nine-fold Muses dear ; 

For the Seer the winding Concord 
Paused by his door to hear ; 

For him, our guide and Nestor, 
Who the march of song began, 

The white locks of his ninety years 
Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann ! 

For him who, to the music 

Her pines and hemlocks played, 

Set the old and tender story 
Of the lorn Acadian maid ; 



For him, whose voice for freedom 
Swayed friend and foe at will, 

Hushed is the tongue of silver, 
The golden lips are still ! 

For her whose life of duty 
At scoff and menace smiled. 

Brave as the wife of Roland, 
Yet gentle as a Child. 

And for him the three-hilled city 
Shall hold in memory long, 

Whose name is the hint and token 
Of the pleasant Fields of Song ! 

For the old friends unforgotten. 

For the young thou hast not known, 

I speak their heart-warm greeting ; 
Come back and take thy own ! 

From England's royal farewells, 

And honors fitly paid, 
Come back, dear Russell Lowell, 

To Elm wood's waiting shade ! 

Come home with all the garlands 
That crown of right thy head. 

I speak for comrades living, 
I speak for comrades dead ! 



AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

GEORGE FULLER 

Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous 

youth 
Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve ! How passing 

fair 
Her shapes took color in thy homestead air ! 
How on thy canvas even her dreams were 

truth ! 
Magician ! who from commonest elements 
Called up divine ideals, clothed upon 
By mystic lights soft blending into one 
Womanly grace and child-like innocence. 
Teacher ! thy lesson was not given in vain. 
Beauty is goodness ; ugliness is sin : 
Art's place is sacred : nothing foul therein 
May crawl or tread -with bestial feet profane 
If rightly choosing is the jiainter'stest, 
Thy choice, O master, ever was the best. 



SAMUEL J. TILDEN 



217 



MULFORD 
Author of The Nation and The Eepuhlic of God. 

Unnoted as the setting of a star 

He passed ; and sect and party scarcely 

knew 
When from their midst a sage and seer 
withdrew 
To fitter audience, where the great dead are 
In God's republic of the heart and mind, 
Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind. 

TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER 

Luck to the craft that bears this name of 

mine, 
Good fortune follow with her golden spoon 
The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon ; 
And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the brine. 
Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her line. 
Shipped with her crew, whatever wind may 

blow. 
Or tides delay, my wish with her shall go. 
Fishing by proxy. Would that it might 

show 
At need her course, in lack of sun and star, 
Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp 

reefs are ; 
Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee 
And Avalon's rock ; make populous the sea 



Round Grand Manan with eager finny 

swarms. 
Break the long calms, and charm away the 

storms. 

SAMUEL J. TILDEN 

GREYSTONE, AUGUST 4, 1 886 

Once more, O all-adjusting Death ! 

The nation's Pantheon opens wide ; 
Once more a common sorrow saith 

A strong, wise man has died. 

Faults doubtless had he. Had we not 
Our own, to question and asperse 

The wortli we doubted or forgot 
Until beside his hearse ? 

Ambitious, cautious, yet the man 

To strike down fraud with resolute hand 

A patriot, if a partisan. 
He loved his native land. 

So let the mourning bells be rung. 
The banner droop its folds half way, 

And while the public pen and tongue 
Their fitting tribute pay. 

Shall we not vow above his bier 

To set our feet on party lies. 
And wound no more a living ear 

With words that Death denies ? 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



EVA 

Sng^sted by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle 
Tom's Cabin, and written when the characters 
in the tale were realities by the fireside of 
countless American homes. 

Dry the tears for holy Eva, 
With the blessed angels leave her ; 
Of the form so soft and fair 
Give to earth the tender care. 

For the golden locks of Eva 
Let the sunny south-land give her 
Flowery pillow of repose, 
Orange-bloom and budding rose. 

In the better home of Eva 
Let the shining ones receive her. 
With the welcome-voiced psalm, 
Harj) of gold and waving palm ! 

All is light and peace with Eva ; 
There the darkness cometh never ; 
Tears are wiped, and fetters fall. 
And the Lord is all in all. 

Weep no more for happy Eva, 
Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her ; 
Care and pain and weariness 
Lost in love so measureless. 

Gentle Eva, loving Eva, 
Child confessor, true believer, 
Listener at the Master's knee, 
" Suffer such to come to me." 

Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva, 
Lighting all the solemn river. 
And the blessings of the poor 
Wafting to the heavenly shore ! 



A LAY OF OLD TIME 

Written for the Essex County A^ieultural 
Fair, and sunjj at the banquet at Newburyport, 
October 2, 1856. 



One morning of the first sad Fall, 

Poor Adam and his bride 
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall — 

But on the outer side. 

She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit 

For the chaste garb of old ; 
He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit 

For Eden's drupes of gold. 

Behind them, smiling in the morn, 

Their forfeit garden lay. 
Before them, wild with rock and thorn, 

The desert stretched away. 

They heard the air above them fanned, 

A liglit step on the sward. 
And lo ! they saw before them stand 

The angel of the Lord ! 

" Arise," he said, " why look behind, 

When hope is all before. 
And patient hand and willing mind 

Your loss may yet restore ? 

" I leave with you a spell whose power 

Can make the desert glad. 
And call around you fruit and flower 

As fair as Eden had. 

" I clothe your bands with power to lift 
The curse from off your soil ; 

Your very doom shall seem a gift, 
Your loss a gain through Toil. 

" Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees. 

To labor as to play." 
White glimmering over Eden's trees 

The angel passed away. 

The pilgrims of the world went forth 

Obedient to the word, 
And found where'er they tilled the earth 

A garden of the Lord ! 

The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit 
And blushed with plum and pear. 



KENOZA LAKE 



219 



And seeded grass and trodden root 
Grew sweet beneath their care. 

We share our primal parents' fate, 
And, in our turn and day, 

Look back on Eden's sworded gate 
As sad and lost as they. 

But still for us his native skies 
The pitying Angel leaves, 

And leads through Toil to Paradise 
New Adams and new Eves ! 



A SONG OF HARVEST 

For the Agricultural and Horticultural Exhi- 
bition at Amesbury aud Salisbury, September 
28, 1858. 

This day, two hundred years ago, 
Tlie wild grape by the river's side, 

And tasteless groundnut trailing low, 
The table of the woods supplied. 

Unknown the apple's red and gold. 
The blushing tint of peach and pear ; 

The mirror of the Powow told 
No tale of orchards ripe and rare. 

Wild as the fruits he scorned to till, 
These vales the idle Indian trod ; 

Nor knew the glad, creative skill. 
The joy of him who toils with God. 

O Painter of the fruits and flowers ! 

We thank Thee for thy wise design 
Whereby these human hands of ours 

In Nature's garden work with Thine. 

And thanks that from our daily need 
The joy of simple faith is born ; 

That he who smites the summer weed. 
May trust Thee for the autumn corn. 

Give fools their gold, and knaves their 
power ; 

Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall ; 
Who sows a field, or trains a flower. 

Or plants a tree, is more than all. 

For he who blesses most is blest ; 

And God and man shall own his worth 
Who toils to leave as his bequest 

Au added beauty to the earth. 



Aud, soon or late, to all that sow. 
The time of harvest shall be given ; 

The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow, 
If not on earth, at last in heaven. 



KENOZA LAKE 

This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the 
" Great Pond" of the writer's boyhood. In 
1859 a movement was made for improving its 
shores as a public park. Atthe opening of the 
park, August SI, 1859, the poem which gave it 
the name of Kenoza (in the Indian language 
signifpng Pickerel) was read. 

As Adam did in Paradise, 

To-day the primal right we claim : 
Fair mirror of the woods and skies. 

We give to thee a name. 

Lake of the pickerel ! — let no more 

The echoes answer back, " Great Pond," 

But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore 
And watching hills beyond, 

Let Indian ghosts, if such there be 
Who ply unseen their shadowy lines, 

Call back the ancient name to thee. 
As with the voice of pines. 

The shores we trod as barefoot boys. 

The nutted woods we wandered through, 

To friendship, love, and social joys 
We consecrate anew. 

Here shall the tender song be sung, 
And memory's dirges soft and low. 

And wit shall sparkle on the tongue, 
And mirth shall overflow. 

Harmless as summer lightning plays 
From a low, hidden cloud by night, 

A light to set the hills ablaze. 
But not a bolt to smite. 

In sunny South and prairied West 
Are exiled hearts remembering still. 

As bees their hive, as birds their nest. 
The homes of Haverhill. 

They join us in our rites to-day ; 

And, listening, we may hear, erelong, 
From inland lake and ocean bay. 

The echoes of our song. 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Kenoza ! o'er no sweeter lake 

Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail, - 
No fairer face than thine shall take 

The sunset's golden veil. 

Long be it ere the tide of trade 

Shall break with harsh-resounding diu 

The quiet of thy banks of shade, 
And hills that fold thee in. 

Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, 
The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, 

Wind-weary from his fields of air, 
The wild-goose on thee float. 

Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, 
Thy beauty our deforming strife ; 

Thy woods and waters minister 
The healing of their life. 

And sinless Mirth, from care released, 
Behold, uuawed, thy mirrored sky, 

Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast 
The Master's loving eye. 

And when the summer day grows dim, 
And light mists walk thy mimic sea, 

Revive in us the thought of Him 
Who walked on Galilee ! 



FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL 

The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine 
Of fruitful Ceres charm no more ; 

The woven wreaths of oak and pine 
Are dust along the Isthmian shore. 

But beauty hath its homage still, 
And nature holds us still in debt ; 

And woman's grace and household skill. 
And manhood's toil, are honored yet. 

And we, to-day, amidst our flowers 
And fruits, have come to own again 

The blessings of the summer hours. 
The early and the latter rain ; 

To see our Father's hand once more 
Reverse for us the plenteous horn 

Of autumn, filled and running o'er 

With fruit, and flower, and golden corn ! 

Once more the liberal year laughs out 
O'er richer stores than gems or gold ; 



Once more with harvest-song and shout 
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 

Our common mother rests and sings. 

Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves ; 

Her lap is full of goodly things. 

Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 

Oh, favors every year made new ! 

Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent I 
The bounty overruns our due, 

The fulness shames our discontent. 

We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on •, 
We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, 

We choose the shadow, but the sun 
That casts it shines behind us still. 

God gives us with our rugged soil 
The power to make it Eden-fair, 

And i-icher fruits to crown our toil 
Than summer-wedded islands bear. 

Who murmurs at his lot to-day ? 

Who scorns his native fruit and bloom ? 
Or sighs for dainties far away. 

Beside the bounteous board of home ? 

Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm 
Can change a rocky soil to gold, — 

That brave and generous lives can warm 
A clime with northern ices cold. 

And let these altars, wreathed with flowers 
And piled with fruits, awake again 

Thanksgivings for the golden hours. 
The early and the latter rain ! 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI 

Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, 
Providence, R. I., 6th mo., 1860. 

From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea- 

clifPs of Maine, 
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather 

again ; 
And, with hearts warmer grown as your 

heads grow more cool, 
Play over the old game of going to school. 

All your strifes and vexations, your whims 

and complaints, 
(You were not saints yourselves, if the 

children of saints !) 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI 



221 



A-U your petty self-seekings and rivalries 

done, 
Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts 

beat as one ! 

How widely soe'er you have strayed from 

the fold, 
Though your " thee " has grown " you," and 

your drab blue and gold, 
To the old friendly speech and the garb's 

sober form, 
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you 

warm. 

But, the first greetings over, you glance 

round the hall ; 
Your hearts call the roll, but they answer 

not all : 
Through the turf green above them the dead 

cannot hear ; 
Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as 

a tear ! 

In love, let us trust, they were summoned 

so soon 
From the morning of life, while we toil 

through its noon ; 
They were frail like ourselves, they had 

needs like our own. 
And they rest as we rest in God's mercy 

alone. 

Unchanged by our changes of spirit and 

frame. 
Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is 

the same ; 
Though we sink in the darkness. His arms 

break our fall. 
And in death as in life. He is Father of 

all! 

We are older : our footsteps, so light in 

the play 
Of the far-away school-time, move slower 

to-day ; — 
Here a beard touched with frost, there a 

bald, shining crown. 
And beneath the cap's border gray mingles 

with brown. 

But faith should be cheerful, and trust 

should be glad, 
A.nd our follies and sins, not our years, make 

us sad. 



Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet 

grows prim, 
And the face grow in length as the hat grows 

in brim ? 

Life is brief, duty grave ; but, with rain- 
folded wings, 

Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart 
sings ; 

And we, of all others, have reason to pay 

The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our 
way ; 

For the counsels that turned from the follies 
of youth ; 

For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of 
truth ; 

For the wounds of rebuke, when love tem- 
pered its edge ; 

For the household's restraint, and the disci- 
pline's hedge ; 

For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to 

the least 
Of the creatures of God, whether human 

or beast, 
Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength 

to the frail, 
In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and 

jail ; 

For a womanhood higher and holier, by all 
Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere 

her fall , — 
Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as 

play, 
Serene as the moonlight and warm as the 

day; 

And, yet more, for the faith which embraces 

the whole, 
Of the creeds of the ages the life and the 

soul. 
Wherein letter and spirit the same channel 

run. 
And man has not severed what God has 

made one ! 

For a sense of the Goodness revealed every- 
where. 

As sunshine impartial, and free as the air ; 

For a trust in humanity. Heathen or Jew, 

And a hope for all darkness the Light 
shineth through. 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Who scoffs at our birthright ? — the words 

of the seers, 
And the songs of the bards in the twilight 

of years, 
All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and 

sage. 
In prophet and priest, are our true heritage. 

The Word which the reason of Plato dis- 
cerned ; 

Tlie truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire 
burned ; 

The soul of the world which the Stoic but 
guessed. 

In the Light Universal the Quaker con- 
fessed ! 

No honors of war to our worthies be- 
long ; 

Their plain stem of life never flowered into 
song ; 

But the fountains they opened still gush by 
the way, 

And the world for their healing is better to- 
day. 

He who lies where the minster's groined 

arches curve down 
To the tomb-crowded transept of England's 

renown. 
The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, 
Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all 

owned, — 

Who through the world's pantheon walked 

in his pride, 
Setting new statues up, thrustmg old ones 

aside. 
And in fiction the pencils of history dipped. 
To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his 

crypt, — 

How vainly he labored to sully with 

blame 
The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his 

fame ! 
Self - will is self - wovmding, perversity 

blind : 
On himself fell the stain for the Quaker 

designed ! 

For the sake of his true-hearted father be- 
fore him ; 

For the sake of the dear Quaker mother 
that bore him : 



For the sake of his gifts, and the works that 

outlive him. 
And his brave words for freedom, we freely 

forgive him ! 

There are those who take note that our 
numbers are small, — 

New Gibbons who write our decline and our 
fall ; 

But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of 
His own. 

And the world shall yet reap what our sow- 
ers have sown. 

The last of the sect to his fathers may go. 

Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to 
show ; 

But the truth will ovitlive him, and broaden 
with years. 

Till the false dies away, and the wrong dis- 
appears. 

Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight 

sinks the stone. 
In the deep sea of time, but the circles 

sweep on. 
Till the low-rippled murmurs along the 

shores run. 
And the dark and dead waters leap glad in 

the sun. 

Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to 

forget 
To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom 

our debt ? — 
Hide their words oiit of sight, like the garb 

that they wore, 
And for Barclay's Apology offer one more ? 

Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that 
glutted the shears. 

And festooned the stocks with our grand- 
fathers' ears ? 

Talk of Woolman's nnsoixndness ? count 
Penn heterodox ? 

And take CottonMather in place of George 
Fox? 

Make our preachers war-chaplains ? quote 

Scripture to take 
The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake ? 
Go to burning church-candles, and chanting 

in choir. 
And on the old meeting-house stick up a 

spire ? 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI 



223 



No ! the old paths we '11 keep until better 

are shown, 
Credit good where we find it, abroad or our 

own ; 
And while " Lo here " and " Lo there " the 

multitude call. 
Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all. 

The good round about us we need not refuse, 
Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews; 
But why shirk the badge which our fathers 

have worn, 
Or beg the world's pardon for having been 

born ? 

We need not pray over the Pharisee's prayer. 
Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's 

share ; 
Truth to us and to others is equal and one : 
Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the 

sun ? 

Well know we our birthright may serve 

but to show 
How the meanest of weeds in the richest 

soil grow ; 
But we need not disparage the good which 

we hold ; 
Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure 

is gold ! 

Enough and too much of the sect and the 

name. 
What matters our label, so truth be our 

aim ? 
The creed may be wrong, but the life may 

be true, 
And hearts beat the same under drab coats 

or blue. 

So the man be a man, let him worship, at 

will. 
In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill. 
When she makes up her jewels, what cares 

yon good town 
For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of 

Brown ? 

And this green, favored island, so fresh and 
sea-blown. 

When she counts up the worthies her annals 
have known, 

Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect 

To measure her love, and mete out her re- 
spect. 



Three shades at this moment seem walking 

her strand. 
Each with head halo-crowned, and with 

palms in his hand, — 
Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling 

serene 
On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. 

One holy name bearing, no longer they 

need 
Credentials of party, and pass-words of 

creed : 
The new song they sing hath a threefold 

accord. 
And they own one baptism, one faith, and 

one Lord ! 

But the golden sands run out : occasions 

like these 
Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the 

seas : 
While we sport with the mosses and pebbles 

ashore, 
They lessen and fade, and we see them no 

more. 

Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant 

thoughts seem 
Like a school-boy's who idles and plays with 

his theme. 
Forgive the light measure whose changes 

display 
The sunshine and rain of our brief April 

day. 

There are moments in life when the lip and 

the eye 
Try the question of whether to smile or to 

cry ; 
And scenes and reunions that prompt like 

our own 
The tender in feeling, the playful in tone. 

I, who never sat down with the boj^s and the 
girls 

At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, 
and Earles, — 

By courtesy only permitted to lay 

On your festival's altar my poor gift, to- 
day, — 

I would joy in your joy : let me have a 

friend's part 
In the warmth of your welcome of hand 

and of heart, — 



224 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



On your play-ground of boyhood unbend 

the brow's care, 
And shift the old burdens our shoulders 

must bear. 

Long live the good School ! giving out year 

by year 
Recruits to true manhood and womanhood 

dear : 
Brave boys, modes b maidens, in beauty sent 

forth, 
The living epistles and proof of its worth ! 

In and out let the young life as steadily 

flow 
As in broad Narragansett the tides come 

and go ; 
And its sons and its daughters in prairie 

and town 
Remember its honor, and guard its renown. 

Not vainly the gift of its founder was 

made ; 
Not prayerless the stones of its corner were 

laid : 
Tlie blessing of Him whom in secret they 

sought 
Has owned the good work which the fathers 

have wrought. 

To Him be the glory forever ! We bear 
To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with 

the tare. 
What we lack in our work may He find in 

our will, 
And winnow in mercy our good from the 

ill! 



OUR RIVER 

FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE 
LAURELS " ON THE MERRIMAC 

Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the 
Girondist party in the French Revolution, when 
a young man travelled extensively in the United 
States. He visited the valley of the Merrimae, 
and speaks in terms of admiration of the view 
from Moulton's hill opposite Amesbury. The 
" Laurel Party," so called, was composed of 
ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the 
Merrimae, and invited friends and guests in 
other sections of the country. Its thoroughly 
enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early 
summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed 



slopes of the Newbury side of the river opposite 
Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several 
poems called out by these gatherings are here 
printed in sequence. 

Once more on yonder laurelled height 

The summer flowers have budded ; 
Once more with summer's golden light 

The vales of home are flooded ; 
And once more, by the grace of Him 

Of every good the Giver, 
We sing upon its wooded rim 

The praises of our river : 

Its pines above, its waves below, 

The west-wind down it blowing, 
As fair as when the young Brissot 

Beheld it seaward flowing, — 
And bore its memory o'er the deep, 

To soothe the martyr's sadness, 
And fresco, in his troubled sleep, 

His prison-walls with gladness. 

We know the world is rich with streams 

Renowned in song and story, 
Whose music murmurs through our dreams 

Of human love and glory : 
We know that Arno's banks are fair, 

And Rhine has castled shadows, 
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr 

Go singing down their meadows. 

But while, unpictured and unsung 

By painter or by poet, 
Our river waits the tuneful tongue 

And cunning hand to show it, — 
We only know the fond skies lean 

Above it, warm with blessing. 
And the sweet soul of our Undine 

Awakes to our caressing. 

No fickle sun -god holds the flocks 

That graze its shores in keeping ; 
No icy kiss of Dian mocks 

The youth beside it sleeping : 
Our Christian river loveth most 

The beautiful and human ; 
The heathen streams of Naiads boast, 

But ours of man and woman. 

The miner in his cabin hears 

The ripple we are hearing ; 
It whispers soft to homesick ears 

Around the settler's clearing : 
In Sacramento's vales of corn. 



REVISITED 



225 



Or Santee's bloom of cotton, 
Our river by its valley-born 
Was never yet forgotten. 

The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills 

The summer air with clangor ; 
The war-storm shakes the solid hills 

Beneath its tread of anger ; 
Young eyes that last year smiled in ours 

Now point the rifle's barrel, 
And hands then stained with fruits and 
flowers 

Bear redder stains of quarrel. 

But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on, 

And rivers still keep flowing. 
The dear God still his rain and sim 

On good and ill bestowing. 
His pine-trees whisper, " Trust and wait ! " 

His flowers are prophesying 
That all we dread of change or fate 

His love is underlying. 

And thou, O Mountain-born ! — no more 

We ask the wise Allotter 
Thau for the firmness of thy shore, 

The calmness of thy water, 
The cheerful lights that overlay 

Thy rugged slopes with beauty. 
To match our spirits to our day 

And make a joy of duty. 



REVISITED 



Read at " The Laurels,' 
6th month, 1865. 



on the Merrimac, 



The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing 
Vex the air of our vales no more ; 

The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning, 
The share is the sword the soldier wore ! 

Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, 
Under thy banks of laurel bloom ; 

Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, 
Sing us the songs of peace and home. 

Let all the tenderer voices of nature 
Temper the triumph and chasten mirth, 

Full of the infinite love and pity 

For fallen martyr and darkened hearth. 

But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes, 
And the oil of joy for mourning long, 



Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters 
Break into jubilant waves of song ! 

Bring us the airs of hills and forests, 
The sweet aroma of birch and pine, 

Give us a waft of the north-wind laden 
With sweetbrier odors and breath of kine 1 

Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets, 
Shadows of clouds that rake the hills, 

The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows, 
The gleam and ripple of Campton rills. 

Lead us away in shadow and sunshine. 
Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles, 

Tlie winding ways of Pemigewasset, 
And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles. 

Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges. 
Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall ; 

Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken 
Under the shade of the mountain wall. 

The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains 
Here in thy glory and strength repeat ; 

Give us a taste of thy upland music. 
Show us the dance of thy silver feet. 

Into thy dutiful life of uses 

Pour the music and weave the flowers : 
With the song of birds and bloom of mead- 
ows 

Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours. 

Sing on ! bring down, O lowland river. 

The joy of the hills to the waiting sea ; 
The wealth of the vales, the pomp of moun- 
tains. 
The breath of the woodlands, bear with 
thee. 

Here, in the calm of thy seaward valley, 
Mirth and labor shall hold their truce ; 

Dance of water and mill of grinding, 
Both are beauty and both are use. 

Type of the Northland's strength and glory, 
Pride and hope of our home and race, — ■ 

Freedom lending to rugged labor 
Tints of beauty and lines of grace. 

Once again, O beautiful river. 

Hear our greetings and take our thanks ; 
Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims 

Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks. 



226 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



For though by the Master's feet untrod- 
den, 
Though never His word has stilled thy 
waves, 
Well for us may thy shores be holy, 

With Christian altars and saintly graves. 

And well may we own thy hint and token 
Of fairer valleys and streams than these. 

Where the rivers of God are full of water, 
And full of sap are His healing trees ! 



"THE LAURELS" 
At the twentieth and last anniversary. 

From these wild rocks I look to-day 
O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see 

The far, low coast-line stretch away 
To where our river meets the sea. 

The light wind blowing off the land 
Is burdened with old voices ; through 

Shut eyes I see how lip and hand 
The greeting of old days renew. 

friends whose hearts still keep their 

prime. 
Whose bright example warms and cheers, 
Ye teach us how to smile at Time, 
And set to music all his years ! 

1 thank you for sweet summer days, 
For pleasant memories lingering long, 

For joyful meetings, fond delays, 
And ties of friendship woven strong. 

As for the last time, side by side, 
You tread the paths familiar grown, 

I reach across the severing tide, 

And blend my farewells with your own. 

Make room, O river of our home ! 

For other feet in place of ours, 
And in the summers yet to come. 

Make glad another Feast of Flowers ! 

Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep, 
The pleasant pictures thou hast seen ; 

Forget thy lovers not, but keep 

Our memory like thy laurels green. 



JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC 

O DWELLERS in the stately towns, 

What come ye out to see ? 
This common earth, this common sky, 

This water flowing free ? 

As gayly as these kalmia flowers 
Your door-yard blossoms spring ; 

As sweetly as these wild-wood birds 
Your caged minstrels sing. 

You find but common bloom and green 

The rippling river's rune. 
The beauty which is everywhere 

Beneath the skies of June ; 

The Hawkswood oaks, the storm -torn 
plumes 

Of old pine-forest kings. 
Beneath whose century-woven shade 

Deer Island's mistress sings. 

And here are pictured Artichoke, 

And Curson's bowery mill ; 
And Pleasant Valley smiles between 

The river and the hill. 

You know full well these banks of bloom, 

The upland's wavy line. 
And how the sunshine tips with fire 

The needles of the pine. 

Yet, like some old remembered psalm, 

Or sweet, familiar face, 
Not less because of commonness 

You love the day and place. 

And not in vain in this soft air 
Shall hard-strung nerves relax. 

Not all in vain the o'erworn brain 
Forego its daily tax. 

The lust of power, the greed of gain 

Have all the year their own ; 
The haunting demons well may let 

Our one bright day alone. 

Unheeded let the newsboy call, 

Aside the ledger lay : 
The world will keep its treadmill step 

Though we fall out to-day. 



HYMN 



!27 



The truants of life's weary school, 
Without excuse from thrift 

We change for once the gains of toil 
For God's unpurchased gift. 

From ceiled rooms, from silent books, 
From crowded car and town. 

Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap 
We lay our tired heads down. 

Cool, summer wind, our heated brows ; 

Blue river, through the green 
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes 

Which all too much have seen. 

For us these pleasant woodland ways 
Are thronged with memories old, 

Have felt the grasp of friendly hands 
And heard love's story told. 

A sacred presence overbroods 
The earth whereon we meet ; 

Tliese winding forest-paths are trod 
By more than mortal feet. 

Old friends called from us by the voice 
Which they alone could hear, 

From mystery to mystery. 
From life to life, draw near. 

More closely for the sake of them 
Each other's hands we press ; 

Our voices take from them a tone 
Of deeper tenderness. 

Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours, 

Alike below, above. 
Or here or there, about us fold 

The arms of one great love ! 

We ask to-day no countersign, 

No party names we own ; 
Unlabelled, individual. 

We bring ourselves alone. 

What cares the unconventioned wood 
For pass-words of the town ? 

The sound of fashion's shibboleth 
The laughing waters drown. 

Here cant forgets his dreary tone, 

And care his face forlorn ; 
The liberal air and sunshine laugh 

The bigot's zeal to scorn. 



From manhood's weary shoulder falls 

His load of selfish cares ; 
And woman takes her rights as flowers 

And brooks and birds take theirs. 

The license of the happy woods, 

The brook's release are ours ; 
The freedom of the unshamed wind 

Among the glad-eyed flowers. 

Yet here no evil thought finds place. 

Nor foot profane comes in ; 
Our grove, like that of Samothrace, 

Is set apart from sin. 

We walk on holy ground ; above 

A sky more holy smiles ; 
The chant of the beatitudes 

Swells down these leafy aisles. 

Thanks to the gracious Providence 
That brings us here once more ; 

For memories of the good behind 
And hopes of good before ! 

And if, unknown to us, sweet days 

Of June like this must come. 
Unseen of us these laurels clothe 

The river-banks with bloom ; 

And these green paths must soon be trod 

By other feet than ours, 
Full long may annual pilgrims come 

To keep the Feast of Flowers ; 

The matron be a girl once more, 

The bearded man a boy. 
And we, in heaven's eternal June, 

Be glad for earthly joy ! 

HYMN 

for the opening of thomas starr 
king's house of worship, 1864 

The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had 
won fame in the East, went to California in 
1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast. 
It was not long after the opening of the house 
of worship built for him that he died. 

Amidst these glorious works of Thine, 
The solemn minarets of the pine, 
And awful Shasta's icy shrine, — 



228 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Where swell Thy hymns from wave and 

gale, 
And organ-thunders never fail, 
Behind the cataract's silver veil, — 

Our puny walls to Thee we raise, 

Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise : 

Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways I 

For, kneeling on these altar-stairs. 
We urge Thee not with selfish prayers. 
Nor murmur at our daily cares. 

Before Thee, in an evil day. 

Our country's bleeding heart we lay. 

And dare not ask Thy hand to stay ; 

But, through the war-cloud, pray to Thee 
For union, but a union free. 
With peace that comes of purity ! 

That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to save 
And, smiting through this Red Sea wave, 
Make broad a pathway for the slave ! 

For us, confessing all our need, 

We trust nor rite nor word nor deed. 

Nor yet the broken staff of creed. 

Assured alone that Thou art good 
To each, as to the multitude. 
Eternal Love and Fatherhood, — 

Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel. 
Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and 

feel 
Our weakness is our strong appeal. 

So, by these Western gates of Even 
We wait to see with Thy forgiven 
The opening Golden Gate of Heaven ! 

Suffice it now. In time to be 
Shall holier altars rise to Thee, — 
Thy Church our broad humanity ! 

White flowers of love its walls shall 

climb. 
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, 
Its days shall all be holy time. 

A sweeter song shall then be heard, — 
The music of the world's accord 
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word I 



That song shall swell from shore to shore, 
One hope, one faith, one love, restore 
The seamless robe that Jesus wore. 



HYMN 

FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGE- 
TOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A 
MOTHER 

The giver of the house was the late George 
Peabody, of London. 

Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all ! 

In temples which thy children raise ; 
Our work to Thine is mean and small, 

And brief to Thy eternal days. 

Forgive the weakness and the pride, 
If marred thereby our gift may be, 

For love, at least, has sanctified 
The altar that we rear to thee. 

The heart and not the hand has wrought 
From sunken base to tower above 

The image of a tender thought, 
The memory of a deathless love ! 

And though should never sound of speech 

Or organ echo from its wall. 
Its stones would pious lessons teach, 

Its shade in benedictions fall. 

Here should the dove of peace be found. 
And blessings and not curses given ; 

Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound 
The mingled loves of earth and heaven. 

Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath 
The dear one watching by Thy cross, 

Forgetful of the pains of death 
In sorrow for her mighty loss, 

In memory of that tender claim, 
Mother-born, the offering take, 

And make it worthy of Thy name, 
And bless it for a mother's sake f 



A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION 

Read at the President's Levee, Brown Uni« 
versity, 29th 6th month, 1870. 



A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION 



229 



To-day the plant by Williams set 

Its summer bloom discloses ; 
The wilding sweetbrier of his prayers 

Is crowned with cultured roses. 

Once more the Island State repeats 
The lesson that he taught her, 

And binds his pearl of charity 

Upon her brown-locked daughter. 

Is 't fancy that he watches still 

His Providence plantations ? 
That still the careful Founder takes 

A part on these occasions ? 

Methinks I see that reverend form, 
Which all of us so well know : 

He rises up to speak ; he jogs 
The presidential elbow. 

" Good friends," he says, " you reap a field 

I sowed in self-denial, 
For toleration had its griefs 

And charity its trial. 

" Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More, 

To him must needs be given 
Who heareth heresy and leaves 

The heretic to Heaven ! 

" I hear again the snuffled tones, 

I see in dreary vision 
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores, 

And prophets with a mission. 

" Each zealot thrust before my eyes 

His Scripture-garbled label ; 
All creeds were shouted in my ears 

As with the tongues of Babel. 

" Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied 

The hope of every other ; 
Each martjT shook his branded fist 

At the conscience of his brother I 

" How cleft the dreary drone of man 

The shriller pipe of woman. 
As Gorton led his saints elect. 

Who held all things in common ! 

"Their gay robes trailed in ditch and 
swamp. 

And torn by thorn and thicket. 
The dancing-girls of Merry Mount 

Came dragging to my wicket. 



" Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears ; 

Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly ; 
And Antinomians, free of law. 

Whose very sins were holy. 

" Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarch- 
ists 
Of stripes and bondage braggarts, 
Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics 
snatched 
From Puritanic fagots. 

" And last, not least, the Quakers came, 
With tongues still sore from burning. 

The Bay State's dust from off their feet 
Before my threshold spurning ; 

" A motley host, the Lord's debris, 
Faith's odds and ends together ; 

Well might I shrink from guests with 
lungs 
Tough as their breeches leather : 

" If, when the hangman at their heels 
Came, rope in hand to catch them, 

I took the hunted outcasts in, 
I never sent to fetch them. 

" I fed, bixt spared them not a whit ; 

I gave to all who walked in. 
Not clams and succotash alone. 

But stronger meat of doctrine. 

" I proved the prophets false, I pricked 

The bubble of perfection. 
And clapped upon their inner light 

The snuffers of election. 

" And looking backward on my times, 

This credit I am taking ; 
I kept each sectary's dish apart, 

No spiritual chowder making. 

" Wliere now the blending signs of sect 

Would puzzle their assorter. 
The dry-shod Quaker kept the land, 

The Baptist held the water. 

" A common coat now serves for both, 

The hat 's no more a fixture ; 
And which was wet and which was dry, 

Who knows in such a mixture ? 

*' Well ! He who fashioned Peter's dream 
To bless them all is able ; 



230 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



And bird and beast and creeping thing 
Make clean upon His table ! 

" I walked hj my own light ; but when 

The ways of faith divided, 
Was I to force unwilling feet 

To tread the path that I did ? 

" I touched the garment-hem of truth, 
Yet sa,w not all its splendor ; 

I knew enough of doubt to feel 
For every conscience tender. 

"' God left men free of choice, as when 
His Eden-trees were planted ; 

Because they chose amiss, should I 
Deny the gift He granted ? 

" So, with a common sense of need, 
Our common weakness feeling, 

I left them with myself to God 
And His all-gracious dealing ! 

" I kept His plan whose rain and sun 
To tare and wheat are given ; 

And if the ways to hell were free, 
I left them free to heaven ! " 

Take heart with us, O man of old, 
Soul-freedom's brave confessor, 

So love of God and man wax strong, 
Let sect and creed be lesser. 

The jarring discords of thy day 
In ours one hymn are swelling ; 

The wandering feet, the severed paths. 
All seek our Father's dwelling. 

And slowly learns the world the truth 
That makes us all thy debtor, — 

That holy life is more than rite. 
And spirit more than letter ; 

That they who differ pole-wide serve 
Perchance the common Master, 

And other sheep He hath than they 
Who graze one narrow pasture ! 

For truth's worst foe is he who claims 

To act as God's avenger. 
And deems, beyond his sentry-beat, 

The crystal walls in danger ! 

Who sets for heresy his traps 
Of verbal quirk and quibble, 



And weeds the garden of the Lord 
With Satan's borrowed dibble. 

To-day our hearts like organ keys 
One Master's touch are feeling ; 

The branches of a common Vine 
Have only leaves of healing. 

Co-workers, yet from varied fields, 
We share this restful nooning ; 

The Quaker with the Baptist here 
Believes in close communing. 

Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone. 
Too light for thy deserving ; 

Thanks for thy generous faith in man, 
Thy trust in God unswerving. 

Still echo in the hearts of men 
The words that thou hast spoken 

No forge of hell can weld again 
The fetters thou hast broken. 

The pilgrim needs a pass no more 

From Roman or Genevan ; 
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps 

Henceforth the road to Heaven ! 



CHICAGO 

The great fire at Chicago was on 8-10 Octo- 
ber, 1871. 

Mex said at vespers : " All is well ! " 
In one wild night the city fell ; 
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain 
Before the fiery hurricane. 

On threescore spires had sunset shone. 
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none. 
Men clasped each other's hands, and said : 
" The City of the West is dead ! " 

Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat. 
The fiends of fire from street to street, 
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare. 
The dumb defiance of despair. 

A sudden impulse thrilled each wire 
That signalled round that sea of fire ; 
Swift words of cheer, warm heart - throbs 



In tears of pity died the flame I 



THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD 



231 



From East, from West, from South and 

North, 
The messages of hope shot forth, 
And, underneath the severing wave, 
The world, full-handed, reached to save. 

Fair seemed the old ; but fairer still 
The new, the dreary void shall fill 
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown, 
For love shall lay each corner-stone. 

Rise, stricken city ! from thee throw 
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe ; 
And build, as to Amphion's strain. 
To songs of cheer thy walls again ! 

How shrivelled in thy hot distress 
The primal sin of selfishness ! 
How instant rose, to take thy part, 
The angel in the human heart ! 

Ah ! not in vain the flames that tossed 
Above thy dreadful holocaust ; 
The Christ again has preached through thee 
The Gospel of Humanity ! 

Then lift once more thy towers on high. 
And fret with spires the western sky, 
To tell that God is yet with us. 
And love is still miracidous ! 



KINSMAN 

Died at the Island of Panay (Philippine 
group), aged nineteen years. 

Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines, 
As sweetly shall the loved one rest, 

As if beneath the whispering pines 
And maple shadows of the West. 

Ye mourn, O hearts of home ! for him, 
But, haply, mourn ye not alone ; 

For him shall far-off eyes be dim, 
And pity speak in tongues unknown. 

There needs no graven line to give 
The story of his blameless youth ; 

All hearts shall throb intuitive. 

And nature guess the simple truth. 

The very meaning of his name 
Shall many a tender tribute win ; 

The stranger own his sacred claim, 
And all the world shall be his kin. 



And there, as here, on main and isle, 
The dews of holy peace shall fall. 

The same sweet heavens above him smile 
And God's dear love be over all ! 



THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF 
LONGWOOD 



Longwood, not far from Bayard Taylor's 
birthplace in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 
was the home of my esteemed friends Jolm and 
Hannah Cox, whose golden wedding was cele- 
brated in 1874. 

With fifty years between you and your 

well-kept wedding vow. 
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not 

a fable now. 

And, sweet as has life's vintage been through 

all your pleasant past. 
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best 

wine is the last ! 

Again before me, with your names, fair 
Chester's landscape comes. 

Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and 
quaint, stone-builded homes. 

The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, 
the boscage green and soft, 

Of which their poet sings so well from 
towered Cedarcroft. 

And lo! from all the country-side come 

neighbors, kith and kin ; 
From city, hamlet, farm - house old, the 

wedding guests come in. 

And they who, without scrip or purse, mob- 
hunted, travel-worn. 

In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as 
victors now return. 

Older and slower, yet the same, files in the 

long array. 
And hearts are light and eyes are glad, 

though heads are badger-gray. 

The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw 

with me the fall, 
Midst roaring flaiiies and shouting mob, of 

Pennsylvania Hall ; 



232 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



And they of Lancaster who turned the 

cheeks of tyrants pale, 
Singing of freedom through the grates of 

Moyamensiug jail ! 

And haply with them, all unseen, old com- 
rades, gone before. 

Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your 
open door, — 

The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave 
Garrett's daring zeal, 

The Christian grace of Pennock, the stead- 
fast heart of Neal. 

Ah me ! beyond all power to name, the 

worthies tried and true, 
Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, 

pass by in hushed review. 

Of varying faiths, a common cause fused 

all their hearts in one. 
God give them now, whate'er their names, 

the peace of duty done ! 

How gladly would I tread again the old- 
remembered places. 

Sit down beside your hearth once more and 
look in the dear old faces ! 

And thank you for the lessons your fifty 

years are teaching. 
For honest lives that louder speak than 

half our noisy preaching ; 

For your steady faith and courage in that 

dark and evil time. 
When the Golden Rule was treason, and to 

feed the hungry crime ; 

For the poor slave's house of refuge when 
the hounds were on his track, 

And saint and sinner, church and state, 
joined hands to send him back. 

Blessings upon you ! — What you did for 

each sad, suffering one. 
So homeless, faint, and naked, irnto our 

Lord was done ! 

Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and 

Longwood's bowery ways 
The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of 

my early days. 



May many more of quiet years be added to 

your sum, 
And, late at last, in tenderest love, the 

beckoning angel come. 

Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, 

alike below, above ; 
Our friends are now in either world, and 

love is sure of love. 



HYMN 

FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, 
ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA 

All things are Thine : no gift have we, 
Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee ; 
And hence with grateful hearts to-day, 
Thy own before Thy feet we lay. 

Thy will was in the builders' thought ; 
Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought ; 
Through mortal motive, scheme and plan, 
Thy wise eternal purpose ran. 

No lack Thy perfect fulness knew ; 
For human needs and longings grew 
This house of prayer, this home of rest, 
In the fair garden of the West. 

In weakness and in want we call 

On Thee for whom the heavens are small ; 

Thy glory is Thy children's good, 

Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood. 

O Father ! deign these walls to bless, 
Fill with Thy love their emptiness, 
And let their door a gateway be 
To lead us from ourselves to Thee ! 



LEXINGTON 

I77S 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 
No battle-joy was theirs, who set 
Against the alien bayonet 

Their homespun breasts in that old day. 

Their feet had trodden peaceful ways ; 

They loved not strife, they dreaded 
pain ; 



I WAS A STRANGER AND YE TOOK ME IN 



23.^ 



They saw not, what to us is plain, 
That God would make man's wrath His 
praise. 

No seers were they, but simple men ; 

Its vast results the future hid ; 

The meaning of the work they did 
Was strange and dark and doubtful then. 

Swift as their summons came they left 

The plough mid - furrow standing 

still, 
The half - ground corn grist in the 
mill 
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. 

They went where duty seemed to call, 
They scarcely asked the reason why ; 
They only knew they could but die, 

And death was not the worst of all ! 

Of man for man the sacrifice. 

All that was theirs to give, they 

gave. 
The flowers that blossomed from their 
grave 
Have sown themselves beneath all skies. 

Their death- shot shook the feudal tower. 
And shattered slavery's chain as 

well ; 
On the sky's dome, as on a bell. 

Its echo struck the world's great hour. 

That fateful echo is not dumb : 

The nations listening to its sound 
Wait, from a century's vantage-groimd, 

The holier triumphs yet to come, — 

The bridal time of Law and Love, 

The gladness of the world's release. 
When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace 

The hawk shall nestle with the dove ! — 



The golden age of brotherhood 
Unknown to other rivalries 
Than of the mild humanities. 

And gracious interchange of good, 

When closer strand shall lean to strand, 
Till meet, beneath saluting flags. 
The eagle of our mountain-crags, 

The lion of our Motherland 1 



THE LIBRARY 

Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, 
November 11, 1875. 

" Let there be light ! " God spake of old, 
And over chaos dark and cold. 
And through the dead and formless frame 
Of nature, life and order came. 

Faint was the light at first that shone 
On giant fern and mastodon. 
On half-formed plant and beast of prey, 
And man as rude and wild as they. 

Age after age, like waves, o'erran 
The earth, uplifting brute and man ; 
And mind, at length, in symbols dark 
Its meanings traced on stone and bark. 

On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll ; 
On plastic clay and leathern scroll, 
Man wrote his thoughts ; the ages passed, 
And lo ! the Press was found at last ! 

Then dead souls woke ; the thoughts of men 
Whose bones were dust re'vived again ; 
The cloister's silence found a tongue, 
Old prophets spake, old poets sung. 

And here, to-day, the dead look down, 
The kings of mind again we crown ; 
We hear the voices lost so long. 
The sage's word, the sibyl's song. 

Here Greek and Roman find themselves 
Alive along these crowded shelves ; 
And Shakespeare treads again his stage, 
And Chaucer paints anew his age. 

As if some Pantheon's marbles broke 
Their stony trance, and lived and spoke, 
Life thrills along the alcoved hall, 
The lords of thought await our call ! 

"I WAS A STRANGER AND YE 
TOOK ME IN" 

An incident in St. Aug'ustine, Florida. 

'Neath skies that winter never knew 
The air was full of light and balm, 



234 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew 
Through orange bloom and groves of 
palm. 

A stranger from the frozen North, 

Who sought the fount of health in vain, 

Sank homeless on the alien earth, 

And breathed the languid air with pain. 

God's angel came ! The tender shade 
Of pity made her blue eye dim; 

Against her woman's breast she laid 
The drooping, fainting head of him. 

She bore him to a pleasant room. 

Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air, 

And watched beside his bed, for whom 
His far-off sisters might not care. 

She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed 
Its lines of pain with tenderest touch. 

With holy hymn and prayer she soothed 
The trembling soul that feared so much. 

Through her the peace that passeth sight 
Came to him, as he lapsed away 

As one whose troubled dreams of night 
Slide slowly into tranquil day. 

The sweetness of the Land of Flowers 
Upon his lonely grave she laid : 

The jasmine dropped its golden showers, 
The orange lent its bloom and shade. 

And something whispered in her thought. 
More sweet than mortal voices be : 

"The service thou for him hast wrought 
O daughter ! hath been done for me." 



CENTENNIAL HYMN 

Written for the opening- of the International 
Exhibition, Philadelphia, May 10, 1876. The 
music for the hymn was written by John K. 
Paine, and may be found in The Atlantic 
Monthly for June, 1876. 



Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done, 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 



Here, where of old, by Thy design, 
The fathers spake that word of Thine 
Whose echo is the glad refrain 
Of rended bolt and falling chain. 
To grace our festal time, from all 
The zones of earth our guests we call. 



Be with us while the New World greets 
The Old World thronging all its streets, 
Unveiling all the triumphs won 
By art or toil beneath the sun ; 
And unto common good ordain 
This rivalship of hand and brain. 



Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
The war flags of a gathered world, 
Beneath our Western skies fulfil 
The Orient's mission of good- will. 
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, 
Send back its Argonauts of peace. 



For art and labor met in truce. 
For beauty made the bride of use, 
We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave 
The austere virtues strong to save, 
The honor proof to place or gold. 
The manhood never bought nor sold ! 



Oh make Thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong ; 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of thy righteous law : 
And, cast in some diviner mould. 
Let the new cycle shame the old ! 



AT SCHOOL-CLOSE 

BOWDOIN STREET, BOSTON, 1 877 

The end has come, as come it must 

To all things ; in these sweet June 
days 

The teacher and the scholar trust 
Their parting feet to separate -(vays. 



HYMN OF THE CHILDREN 



235 



They part : but in the years to be 

Shall pleasant inemoiies cling to each, 

As shells bear inland iron\ the sea 
The murmur of the rhythmic beach. 

One knew the joy the sculptor knows 

When, plastic to his lightest touch, 

His clay-wrought model slowly grows 

• To that fine grace desired so much. 

So daily grew before her eyes 

The living shapes whereon she wrought, 
Strong, tender, innocently wise. 

The child's heart with the woman's 
thought. 

And one shall never quite forget 

The voice that called from dream and 
play, 

The firm but kindly hand that set 

Her feet in learning's pleasant way, — 

The joy of Undine soul-possessed, 

The wakening sense, the strange de- 
light 

That swelled the fabled statue's breast 
And filled its clouded eyes with sight ! 

O Youth and Beauty, loved of all ! 

Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams ; 
In broader ways your footsteps fall, 

Ye test the truth of all that seems. 

Her little realm the teacher leaves, 
She breaks her wand of power apart, 

While, for your love and trust, she gives 
The warm thanks of a grateful heart. 

Hers is the sober summer noon 

Contrasted with your morn of spring, 

The waning with the waxing moon, 
The folded with the outspread wing. 

Across the distance of the years 

She sends her God-speed back to you ; 

She has no thought of doubts or fears : 
Be but yourselves, be pure, be true, 

A.nd prompt in duty ; heed the deep. 
Low voice of conscience ; through the 
ill 

And discord round about you, keep 
Your faith in human nature still. 



Be gentle : unto griefs and needs, 

Be pitiful as woman should. 
And, spite of all the lies of creeds. 

Hold fast the truth that God is good. 

Give and receive ; go forth and bless 
The world that needs the hand and 
heart 

Of Martha's helpful carefulness 
No less than Mary's better part. 

So shall the stream of time flow by 
And leave each year a richer good, 

And matron loveliness outvie 

The nameless charm of maidenhood. 

And, when the world shall link your 
names 
With gracious lives and manners fine, 
The teacher shall assert her claims, 

And proudly whisper, *' These were 
mine ! " 



HYMN OF THE CHILDREN 

Sung at the anniversary of the Children's 
Mission, Boston, 1878. 

Thine are all the gifts, O God ! 

Thine the broken bread ; 
Let the naked feet be shod, 

And the starving fed. 

Let Thy children, by Thy grace, 

Give as they abound. 
Till the poor have breathing-space, 

And the lost are found. 

Wiser than the miser's hoards 

Is the giver's choice ; 
Sweeter than the song of birds 

Is the thankful voice. 

Welcome smiles on faces sad 

As the flowers of spring ; 
Let the tender hearts be glad 

With the joy they bring. 

Happier for their pity's sake 
Make their sports and plays, 

And from lips of childhood take 
Thy perfected praise 1 



236 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 





Round the low tower wall the fire 


THE LANDMARKS 


Snake-like wound its coil of ire. 


Tliis poem was read at a meeting of citizens 


Sacred in its gray respect 


of Boston having for its object the preservation 


From the jealousies of sect, 


of the Old South Church, famous in Colonial 




and Revolutionary history. 


" Save it," seemed the thought of all, 




« Save it, though our roof-trees fall ! " 


I 


Up the tower the young men sprung ; 


Through the streets of Marblehead 


One, the bravest, outward swung 


Fast the red-winged terror sped ; 






By the rope, whose kindling strands 
Smoked beneath the holder's hands, 


Blasting, withering, on it came, 


With its hundred tongues of flame, 






Smiting down with strokes of power 


Where St. Michael's on its way- 


Burning fragments from the tower. 


Stood like chained Andromeda, 






Then the gazing crowd beneath 


Waiting on the rock, like her. 


Broke the painful pause of breath ; 


Swift doom or deliverer ! 






Brave men cheered from street to street, 


Church that, after sea-moss grew 


With home's ashes at their feet ; 


Over walls no longer new, 






Houseless women kerchiefs waved : 


Counted generations five. 


« Thank the Lord ! St. Michael's saved !" 


Four entombed and one alive ; 


II 


Heard the martial thousand tread 


In the heart of Boston town 


Battleward from Marblehead ; 


Stands the church of old renown. 


Saw within the rock-walled bay 


From whose walls the impulse went 


Treville's lilied pennons play. 


Which set free a continent ; 


And the fisher's dory met 


From whose pidpit's oracle 


By the barge of Lafayette, 


Prophecies of freedom fell ; 


Telling good news in advance 


And whose steeple-rocking din 


Of the coming fleet of France ! 


Rang the nation's birth-day in ! 


Church to reverend memories dear, 


Standing at this very hour 


Quaint in desk and chandelier ; 


PeriUed like St. Michael's tower, 


Bell, whose century-rusted tongue 


Held not in the clasp of flame, 


Burials tolled and bridals rung ; 


But by mammon's grasping claim. 


Loft, whose tiny organ kept 


Shall it be of Boston said 


Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept ; 


She is shamed by Marblehead ? 


Altar, o'er whose tablet old 


City of our pride ! as there. 


Sinai's law its thunders rolled ! 


Hast thou none to do and dare ? 


Suddenly the sharp cry came : 


Life was risked for Michael's shrine ; 


« Look ! St. Michael's is aflame ! " 


Shall not wealth be staked for thine ? 



A GREETING 



237 



Woe to thee, when men shall search 
Vainly for the Old South Church ; 

When from Neck to Boston Stone, 
All thy pride of place is gone ; 

When from Bay and railroad car, 
Stretched before them wide and far, 

Men shall only see a great 
Wilderness of brick and slate, 

Every holy spot o'erlaid 

By the commonplace of trade ! 

City of our love ! to thee 
Duty is but destiny. 

True to all thy record saith, 
Keep with thy traditions faith ; 

Ere occasion 's overpast. 
Hold its flowing forelock fast ; 

Honor still the precedents 
Of a grand munificence ; 

In thy old historic way 
Give, as thou didst yesterday 

At the South-land's call, or on 
Need's demand from fired St. John. 

Set thy Church's muffled bell 
Free the generous deed to tell. 

Let thy loyal hearts rejoice 
In the glad, sonorous voice, 

Ringing from the brazen mouth 
Of the bell of the Old South, — 

Ringing clearly, with a will, 

" What she was is Boston still ! " 



GARDEN 

A hymn for the American Horticultural So- 
ciety, 1882. [Orig'inally written to be sung at 
an agricultural and horticultural fair in Ames- 
bury in 1858. It was translated into Portu- 
guese by Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, and 
read at a harvest festival. It has been trans- 
lated into Italian also and sung by peasants at 
the gathering of the vintage.] 



O Painter of the fruits and flowers. 

We own Thy wise design. 
Whereby these human hands of ours 

May share the work of Thine ! 

Apart from Thee we plant in vain 

The root and sow the seed ; 
Thy early and Thy later rain, 

Thy sun and dew we need. 

Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, 

Our burden is our boon ; 
The curse of Earth's gray morning is 

The blessing of its noon. 

Why search the wide world everywhere 
For Eden's unknown ground ? 

That garden of the primal pair 
May nevermore be found. 

But, blest by Thee, our patient toil 

May right the ancient wrong. 
And give to every clime and soil 

The beauty lost so long. 

Our homestead flowers and fruited trees 

May Eden's orchard shame ; 
We taste the tempting sweets of these 

Like Eve, without her blame. 

And, North and South and East and West, 

The pride of every zone. 
The fairest, rarest, and the best 

May all be made our own. 

Its earliest shrines the young world sought 

In hill-groves and in bowers. 
The fittest offerings thither brought 

Were Thy own fruits and flowers. 

And still with reverent hands we cull 
Thy gifts each year renewed ; 

The good is always beautiful, 
The beautiful is good. 



A GREETING 

Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth 
anniversary, June 14, 1882, at a garden party 
at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Slass, 

Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers 

And golden-fruited orange bowers 

To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours I 



238 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



To her who, in our evil time, 
Dragged into light the nution's crime 
With strength beyond the strength of men, 
And, mightier than their swords, her pen ! 
To her who world-wide entrance gave 
To the log-cabin of the slave ; 
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known, 
And all earth's languages his own, — 
North, South, and East and West, made 

all 
The common air electrical. 
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven 
Blazed down, and every chain was riven ! 

Welcome from each and all to her 
Whose Wooing of the Minister 
Revealed the warm heart of the man 
Beneath the creed-boimd Puritan, 
And taught the kinship of the love 
Of man below and God above ; 
To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes 
Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks ; 
Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, 
In quaint Sam Law son's vagrant way, 
With old New England's flavor rife, 
Waifs from her rude idyllic life. 
Are racy as the legends old 
By Chaucer or Boccaccio told ; 
To her who keeps, through change of place 
And time, her native strength and grace. 
Alike where warm Sorrento smiles. 
Or where, by birchen-shaded isles. 
Whose summer winds have shivered o'er 
The icy drift of Labrador, 
She lifts to light the priceless Pearl 
Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl ! 
To her at threescore years and ten 
Be tributes of the tongue and pen ; 
Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given, 
The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven ! 

Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs 
The air to-day, our love is hers ! 
She needs no guaranty of fame 
Whose own is linked with Freedom's name. 
Long ages after ours shall keep 
Her memory living while we sleep ; 
The waves that wash our gray coast lines, 
The winds that rock the Southern pines. 
Shall sing of her ; the unending years 
Shall tell her tale in unborn ears. 
And when, with sins and follies past, 
Are numbered color-hate and caste, 
White, black, and red shall own as one 
The noblest work by woman done. 



GODSPEED 

Written on the occasion of a voyage made 
by my friends Annie Fields and Sarah Orne 
Jewett. 

Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were 
I one 
Whose prayer availeth much, my wish 

should be 
Your favoring trade-wind and consenting 
sea. 
By sail or steed was never love outrun. 
And, here or there, love follows her in 
whom 
All graces and sweet charities unite. 
The old Greek beauty set in holier light ; 
And her for whom New England's byways 

bloom. 
Who walks among us welcome as the 
Spring, 
Calling up blossoms where her light feet 

stray. 
God keep you both, make beautiful your 
way, 
Comfort, console, and bless ; and safely 

bring. 
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea 
The unreturning voyage, my friends to 
me. 



WINTER ROSES 

In reply to a flower gift from Mrs. Putnam's 
school at Jamaica Plain. 

My garden roses long ago 

Have perished from the leaf -strewn 
walks ; 
Their pale, fair sisters smile no more 

Upon the sweet-brier stalks. 

Gone with the flower-time of my life, 
Spring's violets, summer's blooming 
pride, 

And Nature's winter and my own 
Stand, flowerless, side by side. 

So might I yesterday have sung ; 

To-day, in bleak December's noon, 
Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and 
hues. 

The rosy wealth of June I 



NORUMBEGA HALL 



239 



Bless the young hands that culled the gift, 
And bless the hearts that prompted it ; 

If undeserved it comes, at least 
It seems not all unfit. 



Of old my Quaker ancestors 

Had gifts of forty stripes save one ; 
To-day as many roses crown 

The gray head of tlieir son. 

And with them, to my fancy's eye, 
The fresh-faced givers smiling come, 

And nine and thirty happy girls 
Make glad a lonely room. 

They bring the atmosphere of youth ; 

The light and warmth of long ago 
Are in my heart, and on my cheek 

The airs of morning blow. 

O buds of girlhood, yet unblown. 
And fairer than the gift ye chose. 

For you may years like leaves unfold 
The heart of Sharon's rose ! 



THE REUNION 

Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving 
students of Haverhill Academy in 1827-1830. 

The gulf of seven and fifty years 

We stretch our welcoming hands across ; 
The distance but a pebble's toss 

Between us and our youth appears. 

For in life's school we linger on 
The remnant of a once full list ; 
Conning our lessons, undismissed. 

With faces to the setting sun. 

And some have gone the unknown way, 
And some await the call to rest ; 
Who knoweth whether it is best 

For those who went or those who stay ? 

And yet despite of loss and ill, 

If faith and love and hope remain, 
Our length of days is not in vain, 

And life is well worth living still. 

Still to a gracious Providence 

The thanks of grateful hearts are due. 
For blessings when our lives were new. 

For all the good vouchsafed us since. 



The pain that spared us sorer hurt. 
The wisli denied, the purpose crossed. 
And pleasure's fond occasions lost. 

Were mercies to our small desert. 

'Tis something that we wander back. 
Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways. 
And tender memories of old days 

Walk with us by the Merrimac ; 

That even in life's afternoon 

A sense of youth comes back again. 
As through this cool September rain 

The still green woodlands dream of June. 

The eyes grown dim to present things 
Have keener sight for bygone years, 
And sweet and clear, in deafening ears, 

The bird that sang at morning sings. 

Dear comrades, scattered wide and far. 
Send from their homes their kindly word, 
And dearer ones, unseen, unheard. 

Smile on us from some heavenly star. 

For life and death with God are one. 
Unchanged by seeming change His care 
And love are round us here and there ; 

He breaks no thread His hand has spun. 

Soul touches soul, the muster roll 

Of life eternal has no gaps ; 

And after half a century's lapse 
Our school-day ranks are closed and whole. 

Hail and farewell ! We go our way ; 

Where shadows end, we trust in light ; 

The star that ushers in the night 
Is herald also of the day ! 



NORUMBEGA HALL 

Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, 
named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford, who 
was one of the most munificent patrons of 
that noble institution, and who had just pub- 
lished an essay claiming the discovery of the 
site of the somewhat mythical city of Norum- 
bega, was opened with appropriate ceremonies, 
in April, 1886. The following sonnet was writ- 
ten for the occasion, and was read by President 
Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed. 

Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires 
Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside 



24° 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



The winding Charles, nor where the daily 

tide 
Of Naunikeag's haven rises and retires, 
The vision tarried ; but somewhere we knew 
The beautiful gates must open to our 

quest, 
Somewhere that marvellous City of the 

West 
Would lift its towers and palace domes in 

view. 
And, lo ! at last its mystery is made 

known — 
Its only dwellers maidens fair and young. 
Its Princess such as England's Laureate 

sung ; 
And safe from capture, save by love alone, 
It lends its beauty to the lake's green 

shore. 
And Norumbega is a myth no more. 

THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 
1886 

The land, that, from the rule of kings. 
In freeing us, itself made free, 

Our Old World Sister, to us brings 
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty : 

Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands 
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave, 

On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands 
We rear the symbol free hands gave. 

O France, the beautiful ! to thee 
Once more a debt of love we owe : 

In peace beneath thy Colors Three, 
We hail a later Rochambeau ! 

Rise, stately Symbol I holding forth 
Thy light and hope to all who sit 

In chains and darkness ! Belt the earth 
With watch-fires from thy torch up- 
lit ! 

Reveal the prjmal mandate still 

Which Chaos heard and ceased to be, 

Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will 

In signs of fire : " Let man be free ! " 

Shine far, shine free, a guiding light 
To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim, 

A lightning-flash the wretch to smite 
Who shields his license with thy name I 



ONE OF THE SIGNERS 

Written for the unveiling of the statue of 
Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 
1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native 
of the town, was a signer of the Declaration 
of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, 
so called from the "anointed stones" of the 
great Druidieal temple near it, was the seat of 
one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. 
The tradition that the guilty wife of King Ar- 
thur fled thither for protection forms one of 
the finest passages in Tennyson's Idylls of the 
King. 

O STORIED vale of Merrimac, 

Rejoice through all thy shade and 
shine. 
And from his century's sleep call back 

A brave and honored son of thine. 

Unveil his effigy between 

The living and the dead to-day ; 

The fathers of the Old Thirteen 
Shall witness bear as spirits may. 

Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers. 
The shades of Lee and Jefferson, 

Wise Franklin reverend with his years, 
And Carroll, lord of CarroUtou ! 

Be thine henceforth a pride of place 
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea, 

Where scarce a stone is left to trace 
The Holy House of Amesbury. 

A prouder memory lingers round 
The birthplace of thy true man here 

Than that which haunts the refuge found 
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere. 

Tlie plain deal table where he sat 
And signed a nation's title-deed 

Is dearer now to fame than tliat 

Which bore the scroll of Runnymede. 

Long as, on Freedom's natal morn, 
Shall ring the Independence bells, 

Give to thy dwellers yet unborn 
The lesson which his image tells. 

For in that hour of Destiny, 

Which tried the men of bravest stock, 
He knew the end alone must be 

A free land or a traitor's block. 



ONE OF THE SIGNERS 



241 



Among those picked and chosen men 

Than his, who here first drew his breath, 

No firmer fingers held the pen 
Which wrote for liberty or death. 

Not for their hearths and homes alone, 
But for the world their work was done ; 
^n all the winds their thought has flown 
Through all the circuit of the sun. 

We trace its flight by broken chains, 
By songs of grateful Labor still ; 



To-day, in all her holy fanes, 
It rings the bells of freed Brazil. 

O hills that watched his boyhood's home, 
O earth and air that nursed him, give. 

In this memorial semblance, room 
To him who shall its bronze outlive f 

And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice 
That in the countless years to come. 

Whenever Freedom needs a voice. 

These sculptured lips shall not be dumb I 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 

. It can scarcely be necessary to name as the 
two companions whom I reckoned with myself 
in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered mag- 
nate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The 
long line of sandy beach which defines almost 
the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is 
especially marked near its southern extremity, 
by the salt-meadows of Hampton. The Hamp- 
ton River winds through these meadows, and 
the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent 
pitched near its mouth, where also was the 
scene of the Wreck of Rivermouth. The green 
bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head ; 
southward is the Merrimac, with Newbiiryport 
lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green 
trees on its banks. [Mr. Whittier originally 
designed following the Decameron method and 
feigning that each person read his own poem, 
but abandoned it as too hackneyed.] 

I WOULD not sin, in this half -playful 

strain, — 
Too light pei'haps for serious years, 

though born 
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain, — 

Against the pure ideal which has drawn 
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam. 
A simple plot is mine : legends and runes 
Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain 
Silent from boyhood taking voice again, 
Warmed into life once more, even as the 

tunes 
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn. 
Thawed into sound : — a winter fireside 

dream 
Of dawns and sunsets by the summer sea, 
Whose sands are traversed by a silent 

throng 
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery 
Of which it is an emblem ; — and the dear 
Memory of one who might have tuned my 

song 
To sweeter music by her delicate ear. 



When heats as of a tropic clime 

Burned all our inland valleys through, 



Three friends, the guests of summer 
time. 
Pitched their white tent where sea- 
winds blew. 
Behind them, marshes, seamed and 

crossed 
With narrow creeks, and fiower-eni' 
bossed. 
Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy 

arms 
Screened from the stormy East the pleasant 
inland farms. 

At full of tide their bolder shore 

Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat ; 
At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor 

They touched with light, receding feet. 
Northward a green blulf broke the chain 
Of sand-hills ; southward stretched a 
plain 
Of salt grass, with a river winding down. 
Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of 
the town, — 

Whence sometimes, when the wind was 
light 
And dull the thunder of the beach, 
They heard the bells of morn and night 
Swing, miles away, their silver speech. 
Above low scarp and turf-grown wall 
They saw the fort-flag rise and fall ; 
And, the first star to signal twilight's 

hour. 
The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall ' 
light-house tower. 

They rested there, escaped awhile 

From cares that wear the life away, 
To eat the lotus of the Nile 

And drink the poppies of Cathay, — 
To fling their loads of custom down. 
Like drift - weed, on the sand - slopes 
brown. 
And in the sea-waves drown the restless 

pack 
Of duties, claims, and needs that barked 
upon their track. 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



243 



One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore 

A ready credence in his looks, 
A lettered magnate, lording o'er 

An ever-widening realm of books. 
In him brain-cnrrents, near and far, 
Converged as in a Leyden jar ; 
The old, dead authors thronged him round 

about, 
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern 
graves looked out. 

He knew each living pundit well. 

Could weigh the gifts of him or her, 
And well the market value tell 

Of poet and philosopher. 
But if he lost, the scenes behind, 
Somewhat of reverence vague and blind. 
Finding the actors human at the best, 
No readier lips than his the good he saw 
confessed. 

His boyhood fancies not outgrown. 

He loved himself the singer's art ; 
Tenderly, gently, by his own 

He knew and judged an author's heart. 

No Rhadamanthine brow of doom 

Bowed the dazed pedant from his room ; 

And bards, whose name is legion, if denied, 

Bore off alike intact their verses and their 

pride. 

Pleasant it was to roam about 

The lettered world as he had done, 
And see the lords of song without 

Their singing robes and garlands on. 
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere. 
Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer. 
And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore. 
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Wal- 
pole's wit once more. 

And one there was, a dreamer born, 

Who, with a mission to fulfil. 
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 

The crank of an opinion-mill. 
Making his rustic reed of song 
A weapon in the war with wrung, 
Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough 
That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to 
spring and grow. 

Too quiet seemed the man to ride 
The winged Hippogriff Reform ; 

Was his a voice from side to side 
To pierce the tumult of the storm ? 



A silent, shy, peace-lo^dng man, 

He seemed no fiery partisan 
To hold his way against the public frown, 
The ban of Church and State, the fierce 
mob's hounding down. 

For while he wrought with strenuous will 

The work his hands had found to do. 
He heard the fitful music still 

Of winds that out of dream-land blew. 

The din about him could not drown 

What the strange voices whispered down ; 

Along his task-field weird processions swept. 

The visionary pomp of stately phantoms 

stepped. 

The common air was thick with dreams, — 

He told them to the toiling crowd ; 
Such music as the woods and streams 

Sang in his ear he sang aloud ; 
In still, shut bays, on windy capes. 
He heard the call of beckoning shapes, 
And, as the gray old shadows prompted 

him. 
To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped 
their legends grim. 

He rested now his weary hands. 

And lightly moralized and laughed, 
As, tracing on the shifting sands 
A burlesque of his paper-craft. 
He saw the careless waves o'errun 
His words, as time before had done. 
Each day's tide-water washing clean away, 
Like letters from the sand, the work of 
yesterday. 

And one, whose Arab face was tanned 

By tropic sun and boreal frost. 
So travelled there was scarce a land 

Or people left him to exhaust. 
In idling mood had from him hurled 
The poor squeezed orange of the world. 
And in the tent - shade, sat beneath a 

palm, 
Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Ori- 
ental calm. 

The very waves that washed the sand 
Below him, he had seen before 

Whitening the Scandinavian strand 
And sultrj' Mauritanian shore. 

From ice-rimmed isles, from summer 
seas 

Palm-fringed, they bore him messages ; 



244 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again, 
And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain- 
paths of Spain. 

His memory round the ransacked earth 

On Puck's long girdle slid at ease ; 
And, instant, to the valley's girth 

Of mountains, spice isles of the seas. 
Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's 

guess 
At truth and beauty, found access ; 
Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite. 
Old friends, old ways, and kept his boy- 
hood's dreams in sight. 

Untouched as yet by wealth and pride, 

That virgin innocence of beach : 
No shingly monster, hundred-eyed. 

Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach ; 
Unhoused, save where, at intervals. 
The white tents showed their canvas 
walls, 
Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft 

air. 
Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and 
year-long care. 

Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand 
A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, 
Deep laden with a youthful band. 

Whose look some homestead old re- 
called ; 
Brother perchance, and sisters twain, 
And one whose blue eyes told, more 
plain 
Tlian the free language of her rosy lip. 
Of the still dearer claim of love's relation- 
ship. 

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, 

The light laugh of their native rills. 
The perfume of their garden's mint, 

The breezy freedom of the hills, 
They bore, in unrestrained delight. 
The motto of the Garter's knight. 
Careless as if from every gazing thing 
Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his 
ring. 

The clanging sea-fowl came and went. 
The hunter's gun in the marshes rang ; 

At nightfall from a neighboring tent 
A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang. 

Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand, 

Young girls went tripping down the sand; 



And youths and maidens, sitting in the 

moon. 
Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from 

which we wake too soon. 

At times their fishing-lines they plied, 

With an old Triton at the oar. 
Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried 

As a lean cusk from Labrador. 
Strange tales he told of wreck and 

storm, — 
Had seen the sea-snake's awful form, 
And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle com- 
plain. 
Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to 
old Spain ! 

And there, on breezy morns, they saw 
The fishing-schooners outward run. 
Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw 
Turned white or dark to shade and 
sun. 
Sometimes, in calms of closing day, 
They watched the spectral mirage play, 
Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh. 
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a 
sea the sky. 

Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black. 

Stooped low upon the dai-kening main, 
Piercing the waves along its track 
With the slant javelins of rain. 
And when west-wind and sunshine warm 
Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm. 
They saw the prismy hues in thin spray 

showers 
Where the green buds of waves burst into 
white froth flowers. 

And when along the line of shore 

The mists crept upward chill and 
damp. 
Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor 

Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, 

They talked of all things old and new. 

Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do ; 

And in the unquestioned freedom of the 

tent, 
Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease 
lanbent. 

Once, when the sunset splendors died, 
And, trampling up the sloping sand, 

In lines outreaching far and wide. 

The white-maned billows swept to land, 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH 



245 



Dim seen across the gathering shade, 

A vast and ghostly cavalcade, 
They sat around their lighted kerosene. 
Hearing the deep hass roar their every 
pause between. 

Then, urged thereto, the Editor 

Within his full portfolio dipped. 
Feigning excuse while se.irching for 

(With secret pride) his manuscript. 
His pale face flushed from eye to beard, 
With nervous cough his throat he cleared. 
And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed 
The anxious fondness of an author's heart, 
he read : 

THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH 

The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and 
The Changeling was Eunice Cole, who for a 
quarter of a century or more was feared, per- 
secuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. 
She lived alone in a hovel a little distant from 
the spot where the Hampton Academy now 
stands, and there she died, unattended. When 
her death was discovered, she was hastily cov- 
ered up in the earth near by, and a stake 
driven throug-h her body, to exorcise the evil 
spirit. Rev. Stephen Eachiler or Batchelder 
was one of the ablest of the early New Eng- 
land preachers. His marriage late in life to a 
woman regarded by his church as disreputable 
mduced him to return to England, where he 
enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Crom- 
well dimng the Protectorate. 

RIVERMOUTH Rocks are fair to see. 

By dawn or sunset shone across, 
When the ebb of the sea has left them 
free 
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss : 
For there the river comes winding down, 
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, 
And waves on the outer rocks afoam 
Shout to its waters, " Welcome home ! " 

And fair are the sunny isles in view 

East of the grisly Head of the Boar, 
And Agamenticus lifts its blue 

Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er ; 
And southerly, when the tide is down, 
'Twixt white sea -waves and sand-hills 

brown. 
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls 

wheel 
Over a floor of burnished steel. 



Once, in the old Colonial days, 

Two hundred years ago and more, 
A boat sailed down through the winding 
ways 
Of Hampton River to that low shore, 
Full of a goodly company 
Sailing out on the summer sea. 
Veering to catch the land-breeze light. 
With the Boar to left and the Rocks to 
right. 

In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid 
Their scythes to the swaths of salted 
grass, 
" Ah, well-a-day ! our hay must be made ! " 
A young man sighed, who saw them 
pass. 
Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand 
Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, 
Hearing a voice in a far-off song, 
Watching a white hand beckoning long. 

" Fie on the witch ! " cried a merry girl, 
As thev rounded the point where Goody 
Cole 

Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, 
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. 

" Oho ! " she muttered, " ye 're brave to- 
day ! 

But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 

' The broth will be cold that waits at home ; 

For it 's one to go, but another to come 1 ' " 

" She 's cursed," said the skipper ; " speak 

her fair : 
I 'm scary always to see her shake 
Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, 
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a 

snake." 
But merrily still, with laugh and shout, 
From Hampton River the boat sailed out. 
Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed 

nigh, 
And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. 

They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, 
Drawing up haddock and mottled cod ; 
They saw not the Shadow that walked be- 
side. 
They heard not the feet with silence shod. 
But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew. 
Shot by the lightnings through and through; 
And muffled growls, like the growl of a 
beast, 
' Ran along the sky from west to east. 



246 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Then the skipper looked from the darken- 
ing sea 
Up to the dimmed and wading sun ; 
But he spake like a brave man cheerily, 
" Yet there is time for our homeward 
run." 
Veering and tacking, they backward wore ; 
And just as a breath from the woods ashore 
Blew out to whisper of danger past. 
The wrath of the storm came down at 
last ! 

The skipper hauled at the heavy sail : 

" God be our help ! " he only cried, 
As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a 
flail, 
Smote the boat on its starboard side. 
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone 
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown. 
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, 
The strife and torment of sea and air. 

Goody Cole looked out from her door : 
The Isles of Shoals were drowned and 
gone. 
Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar 

Toss the foam from tusks of stone. 
She clasped her hands with a grip of jjain, 
The tear on her cheek was not of rain : 
" They are lost," she muttered, " boat and 

crew ! 
Lord, forgive me ! my words were true ! " 

Suddenly seaward swept the squall ; 

The low sun smote through cloudy rack ; 
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all 

The trend of the coast lay hard and 
black. 
But far and wide as eye could reach. 
No life was seen upon wave or beach ; 
The boat that went out at morning never 
Sailed back again into Hampton River. 

O mower, lean on thy bended snath, 

Look from the meadows green and low : 
The wind of the sea is a waft of death, 

The waves are singing a song of woe ! 
By silent river, by moaning sea. 
Long and vain shall thy watching be : 
Never again shall the sweet voice call, 
Never the white hand rise and fall ! 

Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight 

Ye saw in the light of breaking day ! 
Dead faces looking up cold and white 



From sand and seaweed where they lay. 
Tlie mad old witch-wife wailed and wept. 
And cursed the tide as it backward crept : 
" Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake! 
Leave your dead for the hearts that break! " 

Solemn it was in that old day 

In Hampton town and its log-built 
church. 
Where side by side the coffins lay 

And the mourners stood in aisle and 
porch. 
In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, 
The voices faltered that raised the hymn. 
And Father Dalton, grave and stern. 
Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn. 

But his ancient colleague did not pray ; 

Under the weight of his fourscore years 
He stood apart with the iron-gray 

Of his strong brows knitted to hide his 
tears ; 
And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame, 
Linking her own with bis honored name, 
Subtle as sin, at his side withstood 
The felt reproach of her neigliborhood. 

Apart with them, like them forbid, 

Old Goody Cole looked drearily round, 
As, two by two, with their faces hid, 

The mourners walked to the burying- 
ground. 
She let the staff from her clasped hands 

fall : 
" Lord, forgive us ! we 're sinners all ! " 
And the voice of the old man answered her : 
" Amen ! " said Father Bachiler. 

So, as I sat upon Appledore 

In the calm of a closing summer day, 
And the broken lines of Hampton shore 

In purple mist of cloudland lay. 
The Rivermouth Rocks their story told ; 
And waves aglow with sunset gold, 
Rising and breaking in steady chime, 
Beat the rhythm and kept the time. 

And the sunset paled, and warmed once 
more 
With a softer, tenderer after-glow ; 
In the east was moon-rise, with boats off- 
shore 
And sails in the distance drifting slow. 
The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth 
bar. 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE 



247 



The White Isle kindled its great red star 
And life and death in my old-time lay 
Mingled in peace like the night and day ! 



" Well ! " said the Man of Books, " your 
story 
Is really not ill told in verse. 
As the Celt said of purgatory, 

One might go farther and fare worse." 
The Reader smiled ; and once again 
With steadier voice took up his strain, 
While the fair singer from the neighboring 

tent 
Drew near, and at his side a graceful lis- 
tener bent. 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE 

At the mouth of the Melvin River, which 
empties into Moultonboro Bay in Lake Winni- 
pesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee In- 
dians had their home in the neighborhood of 
the bay, which is plentifully stocked with fish, 
and many relics of their oceupatiou have been 
found. 

Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles 
Dimple round its hundred isles. 
And the mountain's granite ledge 
Cleaves the water like a wedge, 
Ringed about with smooth, gray stones, 
Rest the giant's mighty bones. 

Close beside, in shade and gleam, 
Laughs and ripples Melvin stream ; 
Melvin water, mountain-born. 
All fair flowers its banks adorn ; 
All the woodland voices meet, 
Mingling with its murmurs sweet. 

Over lowlands forest-grown, 
Over waters island-strown, 
Over silver-sanded beach. 
Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, 
Melvin stream and burial-heap. 
Watch and ward the mountains keep. 

Who that Titan cromlech fills ? 
Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills ? 
Knight who on the birchen tree 
Carved his savage heraldry ? 
Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim, 
Prophet, sage, or wizard grim ? 



Rugged type of primal man, 
Grim utilitarian. 

Loving woods for hunt and prowl, 
Lake and hill for fish and fowl. 
As the brown bear blind and dull 
To the grand and beautiful : 

Not for him the lesson drawn 
From the mountains smit with dawn„ 
Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May, 
Sunset's purple bloom of day, — 
Took his life no hue from thence. 
Poor amid such affluence ? 

Haply unto hill and tree 
All too near akin was he : 
Unto him who stands afar 
Nature's marvels greatest are ; 
Who the mountain purple seeks 
Must not clinib the higher peaks. 

Yet who knows, in winter tramp, 
Or the midnight of the camp, 
What revealiugs faint and far. 
Stealing down from moon and star, 
Kindled in that human clod 
Thought of destiny and God ? 

Stateliest forest patriarch. 

Grand in robes of skin and bark. 

What sepulchral mysteries. 

What weird fvmeral-rites, were his ? 

W^hat sharp wail, what drear lament, 

Back scared wolf and eagle sent ? 

Now, whate'er he may have been. 
Low he lies as other men ; 
On his mound the partridge drums, 
There the noisy blue-jay comes ; 
Rank nor name nor pomp has he 
In the grave's democracy. 

Part thy blue lips. Northern lake ! 
Moss-grown rocks, your silence break ! 
Tell the tale, thou ancient tree ! 
Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee ! 
Speak, and tell us how and when 
Lived and died this king of men ! 

Wordless moans the ancient pine ; 
Lake and mountain give no sign ; 
Vain to trace this ring of stones ; 
Vain the search of crumbling bones : 
Deepest of all mysteries. 
And the saddest, silence is. 



248 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Nameless, noteless, clay with clay 
Mingles slowly day by day ; 
But somewhere, for good or ill, 
That dark soul is living still ; 
Somewhere yet that atom's force 
Moves the light-poised universe. 

Strange that on his burial-sod 
Harebells bloom, and golden-rod. 
While the soul's dark horoscope 
Holds no starry sign of hope ! 
Is the Unseen with sight at odds ? 
Nature's pity more than God's ? 

Thus I mused by Melvin's side, 
While the summer eventide 
Made the woods and inland sea 
And the mountains mystery ; 
And the hush of earth and air 
Seemed the pause before a prayer, — 

Prayer for him, for all who rest, 

Mother Earth, upon thy breast, — 

Lapped on Christian turf, or hid 

In rock-cave or pyramid : 

All who sleep, as all who live. 

Well may need the prayer, " Forgive I " 

Desert-smothered caravan, 
Knee-deep dust that once was man. 
Battle-trenches ghastly piled. 
Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, 
Crowded tomb and mounded sod. 
Dumbly crave that prayer to God. 

Oh, the generations old 

Over whom no church-bells tolled, 

Christless, lifting up blind eyes 

To the silence of the skies ! 

For the innumerable dead 

Is my soul disquieted. 

Where be now these silent hosts ? 
Where the camping-ground of ghosts ? 
Where the spectral conscripts led 
To the white tents of the dead ? 
What strange shore or chartless sea 
Holds the awful mystery ? 

Then the warm sky stooped to make 
Double sunset in the lake ; 
While above I saw with it, 
Range on range, the mountains lit ; 
And the calm and splendor stole 
Like an answer to my soul. 



Hear'st thou, O of little faith. 
What to thee the mountain saith, 
What is whispered by the trees? — 
" Cast on God thy care for these ; 
Trust Him, if thy sight be dim : 
Doubt for them is doubt of Him. 

" Blind must be their close-shut eyes 
Where like night the sunshine lies, 
Fiery-linked the self-forged chain 
Binding ever sin to pain. 
Strong their prison-house of will. 
But without He waiteth still. 

" Not with hatred's undertow 
Doth the Love Eternal flow ; 
Every chain that spirits wear 
Crumbles in the breath of prayer ; 
And the penitent's desire 
Opens every gate of fire. 

" Still Thy love, O Christ arisen. 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison ! 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of Thy cross ! 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could somid ! " 

Therefore well may Nature keep 
Equal faith with all who sleep. 
Set her watch of hills around 
Christian grave and heathen mound, 
And to cairn and kirkyard send 
Summer's flowery dividend. 

Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream. 
Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam ! 
On the Indian's grassy tomb 
Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom ! 
Deep below, as high above. 
Sweeps the circle of God's love. 



He paused and questioned with his eye 

The hearers' verdict on his song. 
A low voice asked : " Is 't well to pry 

Into the secrets which belong 
Only to God ? — Tlie life to be 
Is still the unguessed mystery : 
Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls re- 
main. 
We beat with dream and wish the soundless 
doors in vain. 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



249 



" But faith beyond our sight may go." 
He said : " The gracious Fatherhood 
Can only know above, below, 
Eternal purposes of good. 
From our free heritage of will. 
The bitter springs of pain and ill 
Flow only in all worlds. The perfect day 
Of God is shadowless, and love is love 
aiway." 

" I know," she said, " the letter kills ; 

That on our arid fields of strife 
And heat of clashing texts distils 

The dew of spirit and of life. 
But, searching still the written Word, 
I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord, 
A voucher for the hope I also feel 
That sin can give no wound beyond love's 
power to heal." 

"Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'er 

A theme too vast for time and place. 
Go on. Sir Poet, ride once more 

Your hobby at his old free pace. 

But let liim keep, with step discreet, 

The solid earth beneath his feet. 

in the great mystery which around us lies, 

The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped 

is wise." 

The Traveller said : "If songs have 
creeds. 
Their choice of them let singers make ; 
But Art no other sanction needs 

Than beauty for its own fair sake. 
It grinds not in the mill of use. 
Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse ; 
It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own, 
And gives its atmosphere its color and its 
tone. 

" Confess, old friend, your austere school 

Has left your fancy little chance ; 
You square to reason's rigid rule 

The flowing outlines of romance. 
With conscience keen from exercise, 
And chronic fear of compromise, 
You check the free play of your rhymes, 

to clap 
A moral underneath, and spring it like a 
trap." 

The sweet voice answered : " Better so 
Than bolder flights that know no 
check ; 



Better to use the bit, than throw 

The reins all loose on fancy's neck. 
The liberal range of Art should be 
The breadth of Christian liberty. 
Restrained alone by challenge and alarm 
Where its charmed footsteps tread the bor- 
der land of harm. 

" Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives 

The eternal epic of the man. 
He wisest is who only gives. 

True to himself, the best he can ; 
Who, drifting in the winds of praise, 
The inward monitor obeys ; 
And, with the boldness that confesses fear, 
Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his con- 
science steer. 

" Thanks for the fitting word he speaks. 
Nor less for doubtful word unspoken, 
For the false model that he breaks, 

As for the moulded grace unbroken ; 
For what is missed and what remains, 
For losses which are truest gains, 
For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye, 
And truth too fair to need the garnish of a 
lie." 

Laughing, the Critic bowed. " I yield 

The point without another word ; 
Who ever yet a case appealed 

Where beauty's judgment liad been 
beard ? 
And you, my good friend, owe to me 
Your warmest thanks for such a plea, 
As true withal as sweet. For my offence 
Of cavil, let her words be ample recom- 
pense." 

Across the sea one lighthouse star. 

With crimson ray that came and went. 
Revolving on its tower afar. 

Looked through the doorway of the 
tent. 
While outward, over sand-slopes wet, 
Tlie lamp flashed down its yellow jet 
On the long wash of waves, with red and 

green 
Tangles of weltering weed thi-ough the 
white foam-wreaths seen. 

" ' Sing while we may, — r.nother day 
May bring enough of sorrow ; ' — thus 

Our Traveller in his own sweet lay, 
His Crimean camp-song, hints to us," 



250 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



The lady said. " So let it be ; 
Sing us a song," exclaimed all three. 
She smiled : " I can but marvel at your 

choice 
To hear our poet's words through my poor 
borrowed voice." 



Her window opens to the bay, 
On glistening light or misty gray, 
And there at dawn and set of day 

In prayer she kneels. 
" Dear Lord ! " she saith, " to many a home 
From wind and wave the wanderers come ; 
I only see the tossing foam 

Of stranger keels. 

" Blown out and in by summer gales, 
The stately ships, with crowded sails, 
And sailors leaning o'er their rails, 

Before me glide ; 
They come, they go, but nevermore, 
Spice-laden from the Indian shore, 
I see his swift-winged Isidore 

The waves divide. 

" O Thou ! with whom the night is day 
And one the near and far away. 
Look out on yon gray waste, and say 

Where lingers he. 
Alive, perchance, on some lone beach 
Or thirsty isle beyond the reach 
Of man, he hears the mocking speech 

Of wind and sea. 

" O dread and cruel deep, reveal 
The secret which thy waves conceal, 
And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel 

And tell your tale. 
Let winds that tossed his raven hair 
A message from my lost one bear, — 
Some thought of me, a last fond prayer 

Or dying wail ! 

" Come, with your dreariest truth shut out 
The fears that haunt me round about ; 
O God ! I cannot bear this doubt 

That stifles breath. 
The worst is better than the dread ; 
Give me but leave to mourn my dead 
Asleep in trust and hope, instead 

Of life in death ! " 

It miglit have been the evening breeze 
That whispered in the garden trees. 



It might have been the sound of seas 

That rose and fell ; 
But, with her heart, if not her ear, 
The old loved voice she seemed to hear ; 
" I wait to meet thee : be of cheer, 

For all is well ! " 



The sweet voice into silence went, 
A silence which was almost pain 
As through it rolled the long lament, 
The cadence of the mournful main. 
Glancing his written pages o'er. 
The Reader tried his part once more ; 
Leaving the land of hackniatack and pine 
For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with 
vine. 



THE BROTHER OF MERCY 

[Suggested by reading- C. E. Norton's account J 

PiERO LucA, known of all the town 
As the gray porter by the Pitti wall 
Where the noon shadows of the gardens 
fall. 
Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down 
His last sad burden, and beside his mat 
The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat. 

Unseen, in square and blossoming garden 
drifted. 
Soft sunset lights through green Val d' 

Arno sifted ; 
Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted 
Backward and forth, and wove, in love or 

strife. 
In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life : 
But when at last came upward from the 

street 
Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet, 
The sick man started, strove to rise in 

vain, 
Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain. 
And the monk said, " 'T is but the Brother- 
hood 
Of Mercy going on some errand good : 
Their black masks by the palace-wall I see," 
Piero answered faintly, " Woe is me ! 
This day for the first time in forty years 
In vain the bell hath somided in my ears, 
Calling me with my brethren of the mask, 
Beggar and prince alike, to some new task 



THE CHANGELING 



251 



Of love or pity, — Iiaply from the street 
To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with 

feet 
Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish 

brain. 
To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors, 
Down the long twilight of the corridors, 
Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain. 
I loved the work : it was its own reward. 
I never counted on it to offset 
My sins, which are many, or make less my 

debt 
To the free grace and mercy of our Lord ; 
But somehow, father, it has come to be 
In these long years so much a part of me, 
I should not know myself, if lacking it. 
But -with the work the worker too would die. 
And in my place some other self would sit 
Joyful or sad, — what matters, if not I ? 
And now all 's over. Woe is me ! " — " My 

son," 
The monk said soothingly, " thy work is 

done ; 
And no more as a servant, but the guest 
Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest. 
No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost. 
Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit 

down 
Clad in white robes, and wear a golden 

crown 
Forever and forever." — Piero tossed 
On his sick-pillow : " Miserable me ! 
I am too poor for such grand company ; 
The crown would be too heavy for this gray 
Old head ; and God forgive me if I say 
It would be hard to sit there night and day. 
Like an image in the Tribune, doing naught 
With these hard hands, that all my life have 

wrought. 
Not for bread only, but for pity's sake. 
I 'm dull at prayers : I could not keep 

awake. 
Counting my beads. Mine 's but a crazy 

head, 
Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead. 
And if one goes to heaven without a heart, 
God knows he leaves behind his better part. 
I love my fellow-men : the worst I know 
I would do good to. Will death change 

me so 
That I shall sit among the lazy saints. 
Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints 
Of souls that suffer ? Why, I never yet 
Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset, 
Or ass o'eriaden ! Must I rate man less 



Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness ? 
Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be 

sin !) 
The world of pain were better, if therein 
One's heart might still be human, and de- 

sires 
Of natural pity drop upon its fires 
Some cooling tears." 

Thereat the pale monk crossed 
His brow, and muttering, " Madman ! thou 

art lost ! " 
Took up his pyx and fled ; and, left alone, 
The sick man closed his eyes with a great 

groan 
That sank into a prayer, " Thy will be 

done ! " 

Then was he made aware, by soul or ear, 
Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er 

him, 
And of a voice like that of her who bore 

him. 
Tender and most compassionate : " Never 

fear ! 
For heaven is love, as God himself is love ; 
Thy work below shall be thy work above." 
And when he looked, lo! in the stern 

monk's place 
He saw the shining of an angel's face ! 



The Traveller broke the pause. " I 've seen 

The Brothers down the long street steal. 

Black, silent, masked, the crowd between, 

And felt to doff my hat and kneel 
With heart, if not with knee, in prayer. 
For blessings on their pious care." 
The Reader wiped his glasses : " Friends 

of mine. 
We '11 try our home-brewed next, instead 
of foreign wine." 



THE CHANGELING 

For the fairest maid in Hampton 
They needed not to search. 

Who saw young Anna Favor 
Come walking into church, — 

Or bringing from the meadows. 

At set of harvest-day, 
The frolic of the blackbirds. 

The sweetness of the hay. 



252 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Now the weariest of all mothers, 
The saddest two years' bride, 

She scowls in the face of her husband, 
And spurns her child aside. 

" Rake out the red coals, goodman, — 
For there the child shall lie, 

Till the black witch comes to fetch her 
And both up chimney fly. 

** It 's never my own little daughter. 
It 's never my own," she said ; 

*' The witches liave stolen my Anna, 
And left me an imp instead. 

" Oh, fair and sweet was my baby, 
Blue eyes, and hair of gold ; 

But this is ugly and wrinkled, 
Cross, and cunning, and old. 

*' I hate the touch of her fingers, 

I hate the feel of her skin ; 
It 's not the milk from my bosom, 

But my blood, that she sucks in. 

*' My face grows sharp with the torment 
Look ! my arms are skin and bone ! 

Kake open the red coals, goodman. 
And the witch shall have her own. 

" She '11 come when she hears it crying, 
In the shape of an owl or bat, 

And she '11 bring us our darling Anna 
In place of her screeching brat." 

Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton, 
Laid his hand upon her head : 

" Thy sorrow is great, O woman ! 
I sorrow with tliee," he said. 

" The paths to trouble are many, 
And never but one sure way 

Leads out to the light beyond it : 
My poor wife, let us pray." 

Then he said to the great All-Father, 
" Thy daughter is weak and blind ; 

Let her sight come back, and clothe her 
Once more in her right mind. 

" Lead her out of this evil shadow, 

Out of these fancies wild ; 
Let the holy love of the mother 

Turn again to her child. 



" Make her lips like the lips of Mary 

Kissing her blessed Sou ; 
Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus, 

Rest on her little one. 

" Comfort the soul of thy handmaid. 

Open her prison-door, 
And thine shall be all the glory 

And praise forevermore." 

Then into the face of its mother 
The baby looked up and smiled ; 

And the cloud of her soul was lifted, 
And she knew her little child. 

A beam of the slant west simshine 
Made the wan face almost fair, 

Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder 
And the rings of pale gold hair. 

She kissed it on lip and forehead, 
She kissed it on cheek and chin. 

And she bared her snow-white bosom 
To the lips so pale and thin. 

Oh, fair on her bridal morning 

Was the maid who blushed and smiled, 
But fairer to Ezra Dalton 

Looked the mother of his child. 

With more than a lover's fondness 
He stooped to her worn young face, 

And the nursing child and the mother 
He folded in one embrace. 

" Blessed be God ! " he murmured. 

" Blessed be God ! " she said ; 
" For I see, who once was blinded, — 

I live, who once was dead. 

" Now mount and ride, my goodman, 
As thou lovest thy own soul ! 

Woe 's me, if my wicked fancies 
Be the death of Goody Cole ! " 

His horse he saddled and bridled. 

And into the night rode he. 
Now through the great black woodland, 

Now by the white-beached sea. 

He rode through the silent clearings. 

He came to the ferry wide. 
And thrice he called to the boatman 

Asleep on the other side. 



THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH 



^53 



He set his horse to the river, 
He swam to Newbury town, 

And he called up Justice Sewall 
In his nightcap and his gown. 

And the grave and worshipful justice 
(Upon whose soul be peace !) 

Set his name to the jailer's warrant 
For Goodwife Cole's release. 

Then through the night the hoof-beats 
Went sounding like a flail ; 

And Goody Cole at cockcrow 
Came forth from Ipswich jail. 



" Here is a rhyme : I hardly dare 

To venture on its theme worn out ; 
What seems so sweet by Doon and Ayr 

Sounds simply silly hereabout ; 
And pipes by lips Arcadian blown 
Are only tin horns at our own. 
Yet still the muse of pastoral walks with 

us, 
WhUe Hosea Biglow sings, our new Theoc- 
ritus." 

THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH 

Attitash, an Indian word signifying " huckle- 
berry," is the name of a large and beautiful 
lake in the northern part of Amesbury. [In a 
letter to Mr. Fields, Whittier -wrote : '" I should 
like to show thee Attitash, as it is as pretty 
as St. Mary's Lake which Wordsworth sings, 
in fact a great deal prettier. The glimpse of 
the Pawtuckaway range of mountains in Not- 
tingham seen across it is very fine, and it has 
noble groves of pines and maples and ash 
trees."] 

In sky and wave the white clouds swam, 
And the blue hills of Nottingham 

Through gaps of leafy green 

Across the lake were seen, 

When, in the shadow of the ash 
That dreams its dream in Attitash, 

In the warm summer weather, 

Two maidens sat together. 

They sat and watched in idle mood 
The gleam and shade of lake and wood ; 

The beach the keen light smote, 

The white .sail of a boat : 



Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, 
In sweetness, not in music, dying ; 
Hardback, and virgin's-bower. 
And white-spiked clethra-flower. 

With careless ears they heard the plash 
And breezy wash of Attitash, 

The wood-bird's plaintive cry, 

The locust's sharp reply. 

And teased the while, with playful hand, 
The shaggy dog of Newfoundland, 

Whose uncouth frolic spilled 

Their baskets berry-filled. 

Then one, the beauty of whose eyes 
Was evermore a great surprise. 

Tossed back her queenly head, 

And lightly laughing, said : 

" No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold 
That is not lined with yellow gold ; 

I tread no cottage-floor ; 

I own no lover poor, 

" My love must come on silken wings, 
With bridal lights of diamond rings, 

Not foul with kitchen smirch, 

With tallow-dip for torch." 

The other, on whose modest head 
Was lesser dower of beauty shed, 

With look for home-hearths meet, 

And voice exceeding sweet, 

Answered, " We will not rivals be ; 

Take thou the gold, leave love to me ; 
Mine be the cottage small, 
And thine the rich man's hall. 

" I know, indeed, that wealth is good ; 

But lowly roof and simple food. 
With love that hath no doubt. 
Are more than gold without." 

Hard by a farmer hale and yonng 
His cradle in the rye-field swmig, 
Tracking the yellow plain 
With windrows of ripe grain. 

And still, whene'er he paused to whet 
His scythe, the sidelong glance he met 

Of large dark eyes, where strove 

False pride and secret love. 



'■54 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Be strong, young mower of the grain ; 
That love shall overmatch disdain, 

Its instincts soon or late 

The heart shall vindicate. 

In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod, 
Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod 

The margin of the pond. 

Watching the group beyond. 

The supreme hours unnoted come ; 

Unfelt the turning tides of doom ; 
And so the maids laughed on, 
Nor dreamed what Fate had done, — 

Nor knew the step was Destiny's 
That rustled in the birchen trees. 

As, with their lives forecast, 

Fisher and mower passed. 

Erelong by lake and rivulet side 
The summer roses paled and died, 

And Autumn's fingers shed 

The maple's leaves of red. 

Through the long gold-hazed afternt>on. 
Alone, but for the diving loon. 

The partridge in the brake. 

The black duck on the lake, 

Beneath the shadow of the ash 
Sat man and maid by Attitash ; 

And earth and air made room 

For human hearts to bloom. 

Soft spread the carpets of the sod. 
And scarlet-oak and golden-rod 

With blushes and with smiles 

Lit up the forest aisles. 

The mellow light the lake aslant. 
The pebbled margin's ripple-chant 

Attempered and low-toued, 

The tender mystery owned. 

And through the dream the lovers dreamed 
Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights 
streamed ; 

The sunshine seemed to bless. 

The air was a caress. 

Not she who lightly laughed is there, 
With scornful toss of midnight hair, 

Her dark, disdainful eyes. 

And proud lip worldly-wise. 



Her haughty vow is still unsaid, 
But all she dreamed and coveted 
Wears, half to her surprise, 
The youthful farmer's guise ! 

With more than all her old-time pride 
She walks the rye-field at his side, 

Careless of cot or hall. 

Since love transfigures all. 

Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-ground 
Of life is gained ; her hands have found 

The talisman of old 

That changes all to gold. 

While she who could for love dispense 
With all its glittering accidents, 
And trust her heart alone. 
Finds love and gold her own. 

Wliat wealth can buy or art can build 
Awaits her ; but her cup is filled 

Even now unto the brim ; 

Her world is love and him ! 



The while he heard, the Book-man drew 

A length of make-believing face. 
With smothered mischief laughing 
through : 
" Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's place. 
And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep 
On Yankee hills immortal sheep. 
While love-lorn swains and maids the seas 

beyond 
Hold dreamy tryst aromid your huckle- 
berry-pond." 

The Traveller laughed : " Sir Galahad 
Singing of love the Trouvere's lay ! 
How should he know the blindfold lad 
From one of Vulcan's forge-boys ? " — 
" Nay, 
He better sees who stands outside 
Than they who in procession ride," 
The Reader answered : " selectmen and 

squire 
Miss, while they make, the show that way- 
side folks admire. 

" Here is a wild tale of the North, 
Our travelled friend will own as one 

Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth 
And lips of Christian Andersen. 



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH 



255 



They tell it in the valleys green 
Of the fair island he has seen, 
Low lying off the pleasant Swedish shore, 
Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched by 
Elsinore." 



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH 

" Tie stille, barn min ! 
Imorgen kommer Fin, 
Fa'er din, 
Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares oine og hjerte at lege med ! " 
Zealand Rhyme. 

" Build at Kallundborg by the sea 
A church as stately as church may be, 
And there shalt thou wed my daughter 

fair," 
Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare. 

And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said, 
*' Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed ! " 
And off he strode, in his pride of will, 
To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill. 

" Build, O Troll, a church for me 
At Kallundborg by the mighty sea ; 
Build it stately, and build it fair. 
Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare. 

But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is 

wrought 
By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for naught. 
What wnlt thou give for thy church so fair ? " 
" Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare. 

" When Kallundborg church is builded well, 
Thou must the name of its builder tell. 
Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my 

boon." 
" Build," said Esbern, " and build it soon." 

By night and by day the Troll wrought 

on ; 
He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone ; 
But day by day, as the walls rose fair. 
Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare. 

He listened by njght, he watched by day. 
He sought and thought, but he dared not 

, pray ; 
In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy, 
And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply. 

Of his evil bargain far and wide 

k rumor ran through the country-side ; 



And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair, 
Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare. 

And now the church was wellnigh done ; 

One pillar it lacked, and one alone ; 

And the grim Troll muttered, " Fool thou 

art ! 
To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart ! " 

By Kallundborg in black despair. 
Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern 

Snare, 
Till, worn and weary, the strong man 

sank 
Under the birches on Ulshoi bank. 

At his last day's work he heard the Troll 
Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole ; 
Before him the church stood large and 

fair : 
" I have builded my tomb," said Esbern 

Snare. 

And he closed his eyes the sight to hide, 
When he heard a light step at his side : 
" O Esbern Snare ! " a sweet voice said, 
" Would I might die now in thy stead ! " 

With a grasp by love and by fear made 

strong, 
He held her fast, and he held her long ; 
With the beating heart of a bird afeard. 
She hid her face in his flame-red beard. 

" O love ! " he cried, " let me look to-day 
In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away ; 
Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy 

heart 
Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart ! 

" I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee ! 
Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me ! " 
But fast as she prayed, and faster still, 
Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill. 

He knew, as he wrought, that a loving 

heart 
Was somehow baffling his evil art ; 
For more than spell of Elf or Troll 
Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul. 

And Esbern listened, and caught the sound 
Of a Troll-wife singing underground : 
" To-morrow comes Fine, father thine : 
Lie still and hush thee, baby mine ! 



256 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



"Lie still, my darling ! next sunrise 
Thou 'it play with Esbern Snare's heart and 

eyes ! " 
" Ho ! ho ! " quoth Esbern, " is that your 

game ? 
Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his 

name ! " 

The Troll he heard him, and hurried on 
To Kallundborg church with the lacking 

stone. 
" Too late, Gaffer Fine 1 " cried Esbern 

Snare ; 
And Troll and pillar vanished in air ! 

That night the harvesters heard the sound 

Of a woman sobbing underground, 

And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with 

blame 
Of the careless singer who told his name. 

Of the Troll of the Church they sing the 

rune 
By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon ; 
And the fishers of Zealand hear him still 
Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill. 

And seaward over its groves of birch 
Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church, 
Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair. 
Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare ! 



"What," asked the Traveller, "would 
our sires, 
The old Norse story-tellers, say 
Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires. 

And smoking steamboats of to-day ? 
And this, O lady, by your leave, 
Recalls your song of yester eve : 
Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once 

more." 
" Hear, hear ! " the Book-man cried, " the 
lady has the floor. 

" These noisy waves below perhaps 

To such a strain will lend their ear, 
With softer voice and lighter lapse 

Come stealing up the sands 'co hear, 
And what they once refused to do 
For old King Knut accord to you. 
Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners be, 
As once, the legend runs, they heard St. 
Anthony." 



THE CABLE HYMN 

O LONELY bay of Trinity, 

O dreary shores, give ear ! 
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea 

The voice of God to hear ! 

From world to world His couriers fly, 
Thought-winged and shod with fire ; 

The angel of His stormy sky 
Rides down the sunken wire. 

What saith the herald of the Lord ? 

" The world's long strife is done ; 
Close wedded by that mystic cord. 

Its continents are one. 

" And one in heart, as one in blood, 

Shall all her peoples be ; 
The hands of human brotherhood 

Are clasped beneath the sea. 

" Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain 

And Asian mountains borne. 
The vigor of the Northern brain 

Shall nerve the world outworn. 

" From clime to clime, from shore to shore, 
Shall thrill the magic thread ; 

The new Prometheus steals once more 
The fire that wakes the dead." 

Throb on, strong pulse of thunder ! beat 
From answering beach to beach ; 

Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, 
And melt the chains of each ! 

Wild terror of the sky above. 
Glide tamed and dumb below ! 

Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, 
Thy errands to and fro. 

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 

Beneath the deep so far. 
The bridal robe of earth's accord, 

The funeral shroud of war ! 

For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall 
Space mocked and time outrun ; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one ! 

The poles unite, the zones agree, 
The tongues of striving cease ; 



THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL 



257 



As on the Sea of Galilee 

The Christ is whispering, Peace 



" Glad prophecy ! to this at last," 

The Reader said, "shall all things 
come. 
Forgotten be the bugle's blast, 

And battle-music of the drum. 
A little while the world may run 
Its old mad way, with needle-gun 
And ironclad, but truth, at last, shall reign : 
The cradle-song of Christ was never sung 



Shifting his scattered papers, " Here," 
He said, as died the faint applause, 
" Is something that I found last year 

Down on the island known as Orr's. 
I had it from a fair-haired girl 
Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl, 
(As if by some droll freak of circumstance,) 
Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's 



THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL 

What flecks the outer gray beyond 

The sundown's golden trail ? 
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, 

Or gleam of slanting sail ? 
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, 

And sea-worn elders pray, — 
The ghost of what was once a ship 

Is sailing up the bay 1 

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift. 

From peril and from pain. 
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, 

O hundred-harbored Maine ! 
But many a keel shall seaward turn. 

And many a sail outstand. 
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms 

Against the dusk of land. 

She rounds the headland's bristling pines ; 

She threads the isle-set bay ; 
No spur of breeze can speed her on, 

Nor ebb of tide delay. 
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr 

Who tell her date and name, 
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards 

Who hewed her oaken frame. 



Wliat weary doom of baffled quest, 

Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine ? 
What makes thee in the haunts of home 

A wonder and a sign ? 
No foot is on thy silent deck. 

Upon thy helm no hand ; 
No ripple hath the soundless wind 

That smites thee from the land ! 

For never comes the ship to port, 

Howe'er the breeze may be ; 
Just when she nears the waiting shore 

She drifts again to sea. 
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, 

Nor sheer of veering side ; 
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, 

Against the wind and tide. 

In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star 

Of evening guides her in ; 
In vain for her the lamps are lit 

Within thy tower, Segnin ! 
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, 

In vain the pilot call ; 
No hand shall reef her spectral sail, 

Or let her anchor fall. 

Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy. 

Your gray-head hints of ill ; 
And, over sick-beds whispering low. 

Your prophecies fulfil. 
Some home amid yon birchen trees 

Shall drape its door with woe ; 
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, 

The burial boat shall row I 

From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, 

From island and from main. 
From sheltered cove and tided creek, 

Shall glide the funeral train. 
The dead-boat with the bearers four, 

Tlie mourners at her stern, — 
And one shall go the silent way 

Who shall no more return ! 

And men shall sigh, and women weep, 

Wliose dear ones pale and pine, 
And sadly over sunset seas 

Await the ghostly sign. 
They know not that its sails are filled 

By pity's tender breath, 
Nor see the Angel at the helm 

Who steers the Ship of Death t 



2s8 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



" Chill as a down-east breeze should be," 
The Book-man said. " A ghostly touch 
The legend has. I 'm glad to see 

Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch." 
" Well, here is something of the sort 
Which one midsummer day I caught 
In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish." 
•'We wait," the Traveller said; "serve 
hot or cold your dish." 



' THE PALATINE 

Block Island in Long' Island Sound, called 
by the Indians Manisees, the isle of the little 
god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hun- 
dred years or more ago, wlien The Palatine, an 
emigrant ship bound for Philadelphia, driven 
off its course, came upon the coast at this point. 
A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman 
desertion on the part of the crew, had brought 
the unhappy passengers to the verge of starva- 
tion and madness. Tradition says that Avreck- 
ers on shore, after rescuing all but one of the 
survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was diiven 
out to sea before a gale which had sprung up. 
Every twelvemonth, according to the same tradi- 
tion, the spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to 
the inhabitants of the island. 

Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, 
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk ; 
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Mon- 
tauk! 

Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken, 
With never a tree for Spring to waken, 
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken. 

Circled by waters that never freeze, 
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze, 
Lieth the island of Manisees, 

Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold 
The coast lights up on its turret old. 
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould. 

Dreary the land when gust and sleet 
At its doors and windows howl and beat. 
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat ! 



But 



time, when pool and 



in summer 
pond, 

Held in the laps of valleys fond. 
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond ; 



When the hills are sweet with the brier- 
rose, 
And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose 
Flowers the mainland rarely knows ; 

When boats to their morning fishing go, 
And, held to the wind and slanting low. 
Whitening and darkening the small sails 
show, — 

Then is that lonely island fair ; 

And the pale health-seeker findeth there 

The wiue of life in its pleasant air. 

No greener valleys the sun invite. 
On smoother beaches no sea-birds light. 
No blue waves shatter to foam more 
white ! 

There, circling ever their narrow range. 

Quaint tradition and legend strange 

Live on unchallenged, and know no change. 

Old wives spinning their webs of tow, 

Or rocking weirdly to and fro 

In and out of the peat's dull glow, 

And old men mending their nets of twine, 
Talk together of dream and sign, 
Talk of the lost ship Palatine, — 

The ship that, a hundred years before, 
Freighted deep with its goodly store. 
In the gales of the equinox went ashore. 

The eager islanders one by one 
Counted the shots of her signal gun. 
And heard the crash when she drove right 
on ! 

Into the teeth of death she sped : 
(May God forgive the hands that fed 
The false lights over the rocky Head !) 

O men and brothers ! what sights were 

there ! 
White upturned faces, hands stretched in 

prayer ! 
Where waves had pity, could ye not spare ? 

Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of 

prey 
Tearing the heart of the ship away, 
And the dead had never a word to say. 



ABRAHAM DAVENPORT 



259 



And then, with ghastly shimmer and 

shine 
Over the rocks and the seething brine, 
They burned the wreck of the Palatine. 

In their cruel hearts, as they homeward 

sped, 
*' The sea and the rocks are dumb," they 

said : 
" There '11 be no reckoning with the dead." 

But the year went round, and when once 

more 
Along their foam-white curves of shore 
They heard the line-storm rave and roar, 

Behold ! again, with shimmer and shine, 
Over the rocks and the seething brine, 
The flaming wreck of the Palatine ! 

So, haply in fitter words than these, 
Mending their nets on their patient knees, 
They tell the legend of Manisees. 

Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray ; 

" It is known to us all," they quietly 

say ; 
" We too have seen it in our day." 

Is there, then, no death for a word once 

spoken ? 
Was never a deed but left its token 
Written on tables never broken ? 

Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 
Do pictures of all the ages live 
On Nature's infinite negative, 

Which, half in sport, in malice half, 

She shows at times, with shudder or 

laugh, 
Phantom and shadow in photograph ? 

For still, on many a moonless night. 
From Kingston Head and from Montauk 

light 
The spectre kindles and burns in sight. 

Now low and dim, now clear and higher, 
Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire, 
Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire. 

And the. wise Sound skippers, though skies 



Reef their sails when they see the sign 
Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine ! 



" A fitter tale to scream than sing," 
The Book-man said. " Well, fancy, 
then," 
The Reader answered, " on the wing 

The sea-birds shriek it, not for men. 
But in the ear of wave and breeze ! " 
The Traveller mused : " Your Manisees 
Is fairy-land : off Narragansett shore 
Who ever saw the isle or heard its name 
before ? 

" 'T is some strange land of Flyaway, 

Whose dreamy shore the ship beguiles, 
St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray, 

Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles ! " 
" No ghost, but solid turf and rock 
Is the good island known as Block," 
The Reader said. "For beauty and for 

ease 
I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing Mani- 
sees ! 

" But let it pass ; here is a bit 

Of unrhymed story, with a hint 
Of the old preaching mood in it. 

The sort of sidelong moral squint 
Our friend objects to, which has grown, 
I fear, a habit of my own. 
'T was written when the Asian plague dvevi 

near. 
And the land held its breath and paled 
with sudden fear." 



ABRAHAM DAVENPORT 

The famous Dark Day of New England, May 
19, 1780, was a physical puzzle for many years 
to our ancestors, but its occurrence broug:ht 
something more than philosopliical speculation 
into the minds of those who passed through it. 
The incident of Colonel Abraham Davenport's 
sturdy protest is a matter of history. 

In the old days (a custom laid aside 
With breeches and cocked hats) the people 

sent 
Their wisest men to make the public laws. 
And so, from a brown homestead, where the 

Sound 



26o 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, 
Waved over by the woods of Rippowams, 
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil 

deaths, 
Stamford sent up to the councils of the State 
Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport. 

'T was on a May-day of the far old year 
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell 
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring, 
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, 
A horror of great darkness, like the night 
In day of which the Norland sagas tell, — 
The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung 

sky 
Was black with ominous clouds, save where 

its rim 
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that 

which climbs 
The crater's sides from the red hell below. 
Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard 

fowls 
Boosted ; the cattle at the pasture bars 
Lowed, and looked homeward ; bats on 

leathern wings 
Flitted abroad ; the sounds of labor died ; 
Men prayed, and women wept ; all ears 

grew sharp 
To hear the doom -blast of the trumpet 

shatter 
The black sky, that the dreadful face of 

Christ 
Might look from the rent clouds, not as 

he looked 
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern 
As Justice and inexorable Law. 

Meanwhile in the old State House, dim 
as ghosts, 
Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, 
Trembling beneath their legislative robes. 
" It is the Lord's Great Day ! Let us ad- 
journ," 
Some said ; and then, as if with one accord, 
All eyes were turned to Abraham Daven- 
port. 
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice 
The intolerable hush. " This well may be 
The Day of Judgment which the world 

awaits ; 
But be it so or not, I only know 
My present duty, and my Lord's command 
To occupy till He come. So at the post 
Where He hath set me in His providence, 



I choose, for one, to meet Him face to 

face, — 
No faithless servant frightened from my 

task. 
But ready when the Lord of the harvest 

calls ; 
And therefore, with all reverence, I would 

say. 
Let God do His work, we will see to 

ours. 
Bring in the candles." And they brought 

them in. 

Then by the flaring lights the Speaker 
read, 
Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands. 
An act to amend an act to regulate 
The shad and alewive fisheries. Where- 
upon 
Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport, 
Straight to the question, with no figures of 

speech 
Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without 
The shrewd dry humor natural to the man : 
His awe-struck colleagues listening all the 

while, 
Between the pauses of his argument, 
To hear the thunder of the wrath of God 
Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud. 

And there he stands in memory to this 
day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen 
Against the background of unnatural dark, 
A witness to the ages as they pass. 
That simple duty hath no place for fear. 



He ceased : just then the ocean seemed 

To lift a half-faced moon in sight ; 
And, shore - ward, o'er the waters 
gleamed, 
From crest to crest, a line of light, 
Such as of old, with solemn awe. 
The fishers by Geunesaret saw, 
When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of 

God, 
Tracking the waves with light where'er his 
sandals trod. 

Silently for a space each eye 

Upon that sudden glory turned : 
Cool from the land the breeze blew by, 



THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 



261 



The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach 
churned 
Its waves to foam ; on either hand 
Stretclied, far as sight, the hills of sand ; 
With bays of marsh, and capes of bush 

and tree, 
The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond 
the meadowy sea. 

The lady rose to leave. " One song. 
Or hymn," they urged, " before we 
part." 
And she, with lips to which belong 

Sweet intuitions of all art. 
Gave to the winds of night a strain 
Which they who heard would hear again ; 
And to her voice the solemn ocean lent, 
Touching its harp of sand, a deep accom- 
paniment. 



THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 

The harp at Nature's advent strung 

Has never ceased to play ; 
The song the stars of morning sung 

Has never died away. 

And prayer is made, and praise is given, 

By all things near and far ; 
The ocean looketh up to heaven, 

And mirrors every star. 

Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 

As kneels the human knee. 
Their white locks bowing to the sand, 

The priesthood of the sea ! 

They pour their glittering treasures forth. 
Their gifts of pearl they bring. 

And all the listening hills of earth 
Take up the song they sing. 

The green earth sends her incense up 
From many a mountain shrine ; 

From folded leaf and dewy cup 
She pours her sacred wine. 



The mists above the morning rills 
Rise white as wings of prayer ; 

The altar-cnrtains of the hills 
Are sunset's purple air. 

The winds with hymns of praise are loud, 

Or low with sobs of pain, — 
The thunder-organ of the cloud, 

The dropping tears of rain. 

With drooping head and branches crossed 

The twilight forest grieves, 
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost 

From all its sunlit leaves. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch, 

Its transept earth and air. 
The music of its starry march 

The chorus of a prayer. 

So Nature keeps the reverent frame 

With which her years began, 
And all her signs and voices shame 

The prayerless heart of man. 



The singer ceased. The moon's white rays 
Fell on the rapt, still face of her. 
'^ Allah il Allah! He hath praise 

From all things," said the Traveller. 
" Oft from the dessert's silent nights, 

And mountain hymns of sunset lights, 
My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent 
The Moslem's prayer has shamed my 
Christian knee unbent." 

He paused, and lo ! far, faint, and slow 
Tlie bells in Newbury's steeples tolled 
The twelve dead hours ; the lamp burned 
low ; 
The singer sought her canvas fold. 
One sadly said, " At break of day 
We strike our tent and go our way." 
But one made answer cheerily, " Never fear, 
We '11 pitch this tent of ours in type au* 
other year." 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

[Read at the Convention -which formed the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, in Philadel- 
phia, December, 1833.] 

Champion of those who groan beneath 

Oppression's iron hand : 
In view of penury, hate, and death, 

I see thee fearless stand. 
Still bearing up thy lofty brow, 

In the steadfast strength of truth, 
In manhood sealing well the vow 

And promise of thy youth. 

Go on, for thou hast chosen well ; 

On in the strength of God ! 
Long as one human heart shall swell 

Beneath the tyrant's rod. 
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear, 

As thou hast ever spoken. 
Until the dead in sin shall hear, 

The fetter's link be broken ! 

I love thee with a brother's love, 

I feel my pulses thrill. 
To mark thy spirit soar above 

The cloud of human ill. 
My heart hath leaped to answer thine. 

And echo back thy words. 
As leaps the warrior's at the shine 

And flash of kindred swords ! 

They tell me thou art rash and vain, 

A searcher after fame ; 
That thou art striving but to gain 

A long-enduring name ; 
That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand 

And steeled the Afric's heart. 
To shake aloft his vengeful brand, 

And rend his chain apart. 

Have I not known thee well, and read 

Thy mighty purpose long ? 
And watched the trials which have made 

Thy human spirit strong ? 



And shall the slanderer's demon breath 

Avail with one like me, 
To dim the sunshine of my faith 

And earnest trust in thee ? 

Go on, the dagger's point may glare 

Amid thy pathway's gloom ; 
The fate which sternly threatens there 

Is glorious martyrdom ! 
Then onward with a martyr's zeal ; 

And wait thy sure reward 
When man to man no more shall kneel, 

And God alone be Lord 1 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 

Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chieftain 
of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation " de 
Libertas," belonging- to M. Bayou. When the 
rising- of the negroes took place, in 17^1, 
Toussaint refused to join them until he had 
aided M. Bayou and his family to escape to 
Baltimore. The white man had discovered in 
Toussaint many noble qualities, and had m- 
structed him in some of the first branches of 
education ; and the preservation of his life was 
owing to the negro's gratitude for this kind- 
ness. 

In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverture was ap- 
pointed, by the French government, General- 
in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, and, as 
such, signed the Convention with General 
Maitland for the evacuation of the island by 
the British. From this period until 1801 the 
island, under the government of Toussaint, 
was happy, tranquil, and prosperous. The 
miserable attempt of Napoleon to reestablish 
slavery in St. Domingo, although it failed of 
its intended object, proved fatal to the negro 
chieftain. Treacherously seized by Leclerc, 
he was hurried on board a vessel by night, and 
conveyed to France, where he was confined in 
a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besangon, 
where, in April, 18U3, he died. The treatment 
of Toussaint finds a parallel only in the mur- 
der of the Duke D'Enghien. It was the re- 
mark of Godwin, in his Lectures, that the 
West India Islands, since their first discovery 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 



263 



by Columbus, could not boast of a single name 
which deserves comparison with that of Tous- 
saint L'Ouverture. 

'TwAS night. The tranquil moonlight 

smile 
With which Heaven dreams of Earth, 

shed down 
Its beauty on the Indian isle, — 

On broad green field and white-walled 

town ; 
And inland waste of rock and wood, 
In searching simshine, wild and rude, 
Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam, 
Soft as the landsca2)e of a dream. 
All motionless and dewy wet, 
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met : 
The myrtle with its snowy bloom, 
Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom, — 
The white cecropia's silver rind 
Relieved by deeper green behind, 
The orange with its fruit of gold. 
The lithe pauUinia's verdant fold, 
The passion-flower with symbol holy, 
Twining its tendrils long and lowly. 
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall. 
And proudly rising over all. 
The kingly palm's imperial stem, 
Crowned with its leafy diadem, 
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade, 
The fiery-winged cucullo played ! 

low lovely was thine aspect, then, 
Fair island of the Western Sea ! 
Lavish of beauty, even when 
Thy brutes were happier than thy men, 

For they, at least, were free ! 
Regardless of thy glorious clime. 

Unmindful of thy soil of flowers. 
The toiling negro sighed, that Time 

No faster sped his hours. 
For, by the dewy moonlight still. 
He fed the weary-turning mill, 
Or bent him in the chill morass. 
To pluck the long and tangled grass. 
And hear above his scar-worn back 
The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack : 
While in his heart one evil thought 
In solitary madness wrought. 
One baleful fire surviving still 

The quenching of the immortal mind, 
One sterner passion of his kind. 
Which even fetters could not kill. 
The savage hope, to deal, erelong, 
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong ! 



Hark to that cry ! long, loud, and shrill, 
From field and forest, x'ock and hill, 
Thrilling and horrible it rang, 

Around, beneath, above ; 
The wild beast from his cavern sprang. 

The wild bird from her grove ! 
Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony 
Were mingled in that midnight cry ; 
But like the lion's growl of wrath, 
When falls that hunter in his path 
Whose barbed arrow, deeply set. 
Is rankling in his bosom yet. 
It told of hate, full, deep, and strong, 
Of vengeance kindling out of wrong ; 
It was as if the crimes of years — 
Tlie unrequited toil, the tears, 
The shame and hate, which liken well 
Earth's garden to the nether hell — 
Had fomid in nature's self a tongue, 
On which the gathered horror hung ; 
As if from clitf, and stream, and glen 
Burst on the startled ears of men 
That voice which rises unto God, 
Solemn and stern, — the cry of blood ! 
It ceased, and all was still once more. 
Save ocean chafing on his shore, 
The sighing of the wind between 
The broad banana's leaves of green, 
Or bough by restless plumage shook. 
Or murmuring voice of mountain brook. 

Brief was the silence. Once again 

Pealed to the skies that frantic yell, 
Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain, 

And flashes rose and fell ; 
And painted on the blood-red sky, 
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high ; 
And, round the white man's lordly hall, 

Trod, fierce and free, the brute he made ; 
And those who crept along the wall, 
And answered to his lightest call 

With more than spaniel dread, 
The creatures of his lawless beck. 
Were trampling on his very neck ! 
And on the night-air, wild and clear, 
Rose woman's shriek of more than fear ; 
For bloodied arms were round her thrown. 
And dark cheeks pressed against her own 1 

Then, injured Afric ! for the shame 
Of thy own daughters, vengeance came 
Full on the scornful hearts of those, 
Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes, 
And to thy hapless children gave 
One choice, — pollution or the grave I 



264 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Where then was he whose fiery zeal 
Had taught tlie trampled heart to feel, 
Until despair itself grew strong, 
And vengeance fed its torch from wrong? 
Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding ; 
Now, when oppression's heart is bleed- 
ing ; 
Now, when the latent curse of Time 

Is raining down in fire and blood, 
That curse which, through long years of 
crime, 

Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood, — 
Why strikes he not, the foremost one, 
Where murder's sternest deeds are done ? 

He stood the aged palms beneath, 

That shadowed o'er his humble door. 
Listening, with half-suspended breath, 
To the wild sounds of fear and death, 

Toussaint L'Oiiverture ! 
What marvel that his heart beat high ! 

The blow for freedom had been given. 
And blood had answered to the cry 

Wliich Earth sent up to Heaven ! 
What marvel that a fierce delight 
Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night. 
As groan and shout and bursting flame 
Told where the midnight tempest came. 
With blood and fire along its van. 
And death behind ! he was a Man ! 

Yes, dark-souled chieftain ! if the light 

Of mild Religion's heavenly ray 
Unveiled not to thy mental sight 

The lowlier and the purer way, 
In which the Holy Suft'erer trod, 

Meekly amidst the sons of crime ; 
That calm reliance upon God 

For justice in His own good time ; 
That gentleness to which belongs 
Forgiveness for its many wrongs, 
Even as the primal martyr, kneeling 
For mercy on the evil-dealing ; 
Let not the favored white man name 
Thy stern appeal, with words of blame. 
Has he not, with the light of heaven 

Broadly around him, made the same ? 
Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven, 

And gloried in his ghastly shame ? 
Kneeling amidst his brother's blood. 
To offer mockery unto God, 
As if the High and Holy One 
Could smile on deeds of murder done 1 
As if a human sacrifice 
Were purer in His holy eyes, 



Though offered up by Christian hands, 
Than the foul rites of Pagan lands ! 



Sternly, amidst his household band. 
His carbine grasped within his hand. 

The white man stood, prepared and still, 
Waiting the shock of maddened men. 
Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when 

The horn winds through their caverned 
hill. 
And one was weeping in bis sight. 

The sweetest flower of all the isle, 
The bride who seemed but yesternight 

Love's fair embodied smile. 
Aiad, clinging to her trembling knee. 
Looked up the form of infancy, 
With tearful glance in either face 
The secret of its fear to trace. 

" Ha ! stand or die ! " The white man's eye 

His steady muiket gleamed along. 
As a tall Negro hastened nigh, 

With fearless step and strong. 
" What ho, Toussaint ! " A moment more, 
His shadow crossed the lighted floor. 
" Away ! " he shouted ; " fly with me. 
The white man's bark is on the sea ; 
Her sails must catch the seaward wind. 
For sudden vengeance sweeps behind. 
Our brethren from their graves liave spoken, 
The yoke is spurned, the chain is broken ; 
On all the hills our fires are glowing. 
Through all the vales red blood is flowing ! 
No more the mocking White shall rest 
His foot upon the Negro's breast ; 
No more, at morn or eve, shall drip 
The warm blood frona the driver's whip : 
Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance sworn 
For all the wrongs his race have borne, 
Though for each drop of Negro blood 
The white man's veins shall pour a flood ; 
Not all alone the sense of ill 
Around his heart is lingering still, 
Nor deeper can the white man feel 
The generous warmth of grateful zeal. 
Friends of the Negro ! fly with me. 
The path is open to the sea : 
Away, for life ! " He spoke, and pressed 
The young child to his manly breast, 
As, headlong, through the cracking cane, 
Down swept the dark insurgent train, 
Drunken and grim, with shout and yell 
Howled through the dark, like sounds from 
hell. 



THE SLAVE-SHIPS 



265 



Far out, in peace, the white man's sail 
Swayed free before the sunrise gale. 
Cloud-like that island hung afar, 

Aloug the bright horizon's verge. 
O'er which the curse of servile war 

RoUed its red torrent, surge on surge ; 
And he, the Negro champion, where 

In the fierce tumult struggled he ? 
Go trace him by the fiery glare 
Of dwellings in the midnight air, 
The yells of triumph and despair. 

The streams that crimson to the sea ! 

Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb, 

Beneath Besangon's alien sky. 
Dark Haytien ! for the time shall come, 

Yea, even now is nigh, 
When, everywhere, thy name shall be 
Redeemed from color's infamy ; 
And men shall learn to speak of thee 
As one of earth's great spirits, born 
In servitude, and nursed in scorn, 
Casting aside the weary weight 
And fetters of its low estate. 
In that strong majesty of soul 

Which knows no color, tongue, or clime, 
Which still hath spurned the base control 

Of tyrants through all time ! 
Far other hands than mine may wreathe 
The laurel round thy brow of death, 
And speak thy praise, as one whose word 
A thousand fiery spirits stirred. 
Who crushed his foeman as a worm, 
Whose step on human hearts fell firm : 
Be mine the better task to find 
A tribute for thy lofty mind. 
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone 
Some milder virtues all thine own, 
Some gleams of feeling pure and warm, 
Like sunshine on a sky of storm. 
Proofs that the Negro's heart retains 
Some nobleness amid its chains, — 
That kindness to the wronged is never 

Without its excellent reward, 
Holy to human-kind and ever 

Acceptable to God. 



THE SLAVE-SHIPS 

" That fatal, that perfidious bark, 
Built i' the eclipse, and rigged witli curses dark." 
Milton's Lycidas. 

" The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew 
of twenty-two men, and with one hundred and 



sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, 
April, 1819. On approaching the line, a terrible 
malady broke out, — an obstinate disease of the 
eyes, — contagious, and altogether beyond the 
resources of medicine. It was aggravated by 
the scarcity of water among the slaves (only 
half a wine-glass per day being allowed to an 
individual), and by the extreme impurity of 
the air in which they breathed. By the advice 
of the physician, they were brought upon deck 
occasionally ; but some of the poor wretches, 
locking themselves in each other's arms, leaped 
overboard, in the hope, which so universally 
prevails among them, of being swiftly trans- 
ported to their own homes in Africa. To 
check this, the captain ordered several, who 
were stopped in the attempt, to be shot, or 
hanged, before their companions. The disease 
extended to the crew ; and one after another 
were smitten with it, until only one remained 
unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition 
did not preclude calculation : to save the ex- 
pense of supporting slaves rendered unsalable, 
and to obtain grounds for a claim against the 
underwriters, thirty-six of the negroes, having 
become blind, were thrown into the sen and 
drowned!" — Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, 
in the French Chamber of Deimties, June 17, 
1820. 

In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the 
solitary individual whose sight remained un- 
affected should also be seized with the malady, 
a sail was discovered. It was the Spanish sla- 
ver, Leon. The same disease had been there ; 
and, horrible to tell, all the crew had become 
blind ! Unable to assist each other, the ves- 
sels parted. The Spanish ship has never since 
been heard of. The Rodeur reached Guada- 
loupe on the 21st of June ; the only man who 
had escaped the disease, and had thus been 
enabled to steer the slaver into port, caught it 
in three days after its arrival. — Bibliotheque 
Ophthalmologique for November, 1819. 

" All ready ? " cried the captain ; 

" Ay, ay ! " the seamen said ; 
" Heave up the worthless lubbers, — 

The dying and the dead." 
Up from the slave-sliip's prison 

Fierce, bearded heads were thrust; 
** Now let the sharks look to it, — 

Toss up the dead ones first ! " 

Corpse after corpse came up, — 
Death had been busy there ; 

Where every blow is mercy, 
Why should the spoiler spare ? 

Corpse after corpse they cast 
Sullenly from the ship, 



266 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Yet bloody with the traces 
Of fetter-liuk and whip. 

Gloomily stood the captain, 

With his arms upon his breast, 
With his cold brow sternly knotted 
And his iron lip comjiressed. 
" Are all the dead dogs over ? " 

Growled through that matted lip; 
*' The blind ones are no better, 
Let 's lighten the good ship." 

Hark ! from the ship's dark bosom, 

The very sounds of hell ! 
The ringing clank of iron. 

The maniac's short, sharp yell ! 
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled ; 

The starving infant's moan, 
The horror of a breaking heart 

Poured through a mother's groan. 

Up from that loathsome prison 

The stricken blind ones came ; 
Below, had all been darkness. 

Above, was still the same. 
Yet the holy breath of heaven 

Was sweetly breathing there, 
And the heated brow of fever 

Cooled in the soft sea air. 

*' Overboard with them, shipmates ! " 

Cutlass and dirk were plied ; 
Fettered and blind, one after one, 

Plunged down the vessel's side. 
The sabre smote above, 

Beneath, the lean shai'k lay. 
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw 

His quick and human prey. 

God of the earth ! what cries 

Rang upward unto tliee ? 
Voices of agony and blood. 

From ship-deck and from sea. 
The last dull plunge was heard. 

The last wave caught its stain, 
And the unsated shark looked up 

For human hearts in vain. 



Red glowed the western waters, 
Tlie setting sun was there, 

Scattering alike on wave and cloud 
His fiery mesh of hair. 

Amidst a group in blindness, 
A solitary eye 



Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck, 
Into that burning sky. 

" A storm," spoke out the gazer, 
" Is gathering and at hand ; 
Curse on 't, I 'd give my other eye 

For one firm rood of land." 
And then he laughed, but only 

His echoed laugh replied. 
For the blinded and the suifering 
Alone were at his side. 

Night settled on the waters, 

And on a stormy heaven. 
While fiercely on that lone ship's track 

The thunder-gust was driven. 
" A sail ! — thank God, a sail ! " 

And as the helmsman spoke, 
Up through the stormy murmur 

A shout of gladness broke. 

Down came the stranger vessel, 

Unheeding on her way. 
So near that on the slaver's deck 

Fell off her driven spray. 
" Ho ! for the love of mercy, 

We 're perishing and blind ! " 
A wail of utter agony 

Came back upon the wind : 

" Help us ! for we are stricken 

With blindness every one ; 
Ten days' we 've floated fearfully, 

Unnoting star or sun. 
Our ship 's the slaver Leon, — 

We 've but a score on board ; 
Our slaves are all gone over, — 

Help, for the love of God ! " 

On livid brows of agony 

The broad red lightning shone ; 
But the roar of wind and thunder 

Stifled the answering groan ; 
Wailed from tlie broken waters 

A last despairing cry. 
As, kindling in the stormy light, 

The stranger ship went by. 



In the sunny Guadaloupe 
A dark-hulled vessel lay. 

With a crew who noted never 
The nightfall or the day. 

The blossom of the orange 
Was white by every stream, 



EXPOSTULATION 



267 



And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird 
Were in tlie warm sunbeam. 

And the sky was bright as ever, 

And the moonlight slept as well, 
On the palm-trees by the hillside, 

And the streamlet of the dell : 
And the glances of the Creole 

Were still as archly deep. 
And her smiles as full as ever 

Of passion and of sleep. 

But vain were bird and blossom, 

The green earth and the sky, 
And the smile of human faces. 

To the slaver's darkened eye ; 
At the breaking of the morning, 

At the star-lit evening time, 
O'er a world of light and beauty 

Fell the blackness of his crime. 



EXPOSTULATION 

[Originally termed Stanzas, then Follen.] 

Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who 
had come to America for the freedom which was 
denied him in his native land, allied himself 
with the abolitionists, and at a convention of 
delegates from all the anti-slavery organiza- 
tions in New England, held at Boston in May, 
1834, was chairman of a committee to prepare 
an address to the people of New England. 
Toward the close of the address occurred the 
passage Avliich suggested these lines. 

" The despotism which our fathers coidd 
not bear in their native country is expiring-, 
and the sword of justice in her reformed hands 
has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. 
Shall the United States — the free United 
States, which could not bear the bonds of a 
king — cradle the bondage which a king is 
abolishing ? Shall a Republic be less free than 
a Monarchy ? Shall we, in the vigor and buoy- 
ancy of our manhood, be less energetic in right- 
eousness than a kingdom in its age ? " — Dr. 
Fallen'' s Address. 

" Genius of America ! — Spirit of our free 
institution ! — where art thou ? How art thou 
fallen, O Lucifer ! son of the morning, — how 
art thou fallen from Heaven ! Hell from be- 
neath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy 
coming ! The kings of the earth cry out to 
thee. Aha ! Aha ! Art tliou become like unto 
us ? " — Speech of Samuel J. May. 

Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! 
Slaves, in a land of light and law ! 



Slaves, crouching on the very plains 

Where rolled the storm of Freedom's 
war ! 

A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, 
A wail where Camden's martyrs fell. 

By every shrine of patriot blood, 

From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well ! 

By storied hill and hallowed grot, 

By mossy wood and marshy glen. 
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot, 

And hurrying shout of Marion's men ! 
The groan of breaking hearts is there, 

The falling lash, the fetter's clank ! 
Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air 

Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank ! 

What ho ! our countrymen in chains ! 

The whip on woman's shrinking flesli ! 
Our soil yet reddening with the stains 

Caught from her scourging, warm and 
fresh ! 
What ! mothers from their children riven ! 

What ! God's own image bought and 
sold ! 
Americans to market driven. 

And bartered as the brute for gold ! 

Speak ! shall their agony of prayer 

Come thrilling to our hearts in vain.? 
To us whose fathers scorned to bear 

The paltry menace of a chain ; 
To us, whose boast is loud and long 

Of holy Liberty and Light ; 
Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong 

Plead vainly for their plundered Right ? 

What ! shall we send, with lavish breath. 

Our sympathies across the wave. 
Where Manhood, on the field of death, 

Strikes for his freedom or a grave ? 
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung 

For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning. 
And millions hail with pen and tongue 

Our light on all her altars burning ? 

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, 

By Veudome's pile and Schoenbrun'a 
wall. 
And Poland, gasping on her lance, 

The impulse of our cheering call ? 
And shall the slave, beneath our eye. 

Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain? 
And toss his fettered arms on high. 

And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain ? 



268 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be 

A refuge for the stricken slave ? 
And shall the Russian serf go free 

By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave ? 
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane 

Relax the iron hand of pride, 
And bid his bondmen cast the chain 

From fettered soul and limb aside ? 

Shall every flap of England's flag 

Proclaim that all around are free, 
From farthest Ind to each blue crag 

That beetles o'er the Western Sea ? 
And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, 

When Freedom's fire is dim with us. 
And round our country's altar clings 

The damning shade of Slavery's curse ? 

Go, let us ask of Constantine 

To loose his grasp on Poland's throat ; 
And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line 

To spare the struggling Suliote ; 
Will not the scorching answer come 

From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ: 
"Go, loose your fettered slaves at home, 

Then turn and ask the like of us ! " 

Just God ! and shall we calmly rest. 

The Christian's scorn, the heathen's 
mirth, 
'cJontent to live the lingering jest 

And by-word of a mocking Earth ? 
Shall our own glorious land retain 

That curse which Europe scorns to 
bear? 
Shall our own brethren drag the chain 

Which not even Russia's menials wear ? 

Up, then, in Freedom's manly part. 

From graybeard eld to fiery youth. 
And on the nation's naked heart 

Scatter the living coals of Truth ! 
Up ! while ye slumber, deeper yet 

The shadow of our fame is growing ! 
Up ! while ye pause, our sun may set 

In blood around our altars flowing ! 

Oh ! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth. 

The gathered wi-ath of God and man. 
Like that which wasted Egypt's earth. 

When hail and fire above it ran. 
Hear ye no warnings in the air ? 

Feel ye no earthquake underneath ? 
Up, up ! why will ye slumber where 

The sleeper only wakes in death ? 



Rise now for Freedom ! not in strife 

Like that your sterner fathers saw, 
The awful waste of human life. 

The glory and the guilt of war : 
But break the chain, the yoke remove, 

And smite to earth Oppression's rod. 
With those mild arms of Truth and Love, 

Made mighty through the living God ! 

Down let the shrine of Moloch sink, 

And leave no traces where it stood ; 
Nor longer let its idol drink 

His daily cup of human blood ; 
But rear another altar there, 

To Truth and Love and Mercy given. 
And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer, 

Shall call an answer down from Heaven! 



HYMN 

Written for the meeting of the Anti-Slavery 
Society, at Chatham Street Chapel, New York, 
held on the 4th of the seventh month, 1834. 
[Originally entitled Lines.] 

O Thou, whose presence went before 
Our fathers in their weary way, 

As with Thy chosen moved of yore 
The fire by night, the cloud by day ! 

When from each temple of the free, 
A nation's song ascends to Heaven, 

Most Holy Father ! unto Thee 

May not our humble prayer be given ? 

Thy children all, though hue and form 
Are varied in Thine own good will. 

With Thy own holy breathings warm, 
And fashioned in Thine image still. 

We thank Thee, Father ! hill and plain 
Around us wave their fruits once more. 

And clustered vine and blossomed grain 
Are bending round each cottage door. 

And peace is here ; and hope and love 
Are round us as a mantle thrown, 

And unto Thee, supreme above, 
The knee of prayer is bowed alone. 

But oh, for those this 'day can bring. 

As unto us, no joyful thrill ; 
For those who, under Freedom's wing, 

Are bound in Slavery's fetters still ; 



THE YANKEE GIRL 



269 



For those to whom Thy written word 
Of lijjht and love is uever given ; 

For those whose ears have never heard 
The promise and the hope of heaven ! 

For broken heart, and clouded mind, 
Whereon no human mercies fall ; 

Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined, 
Who, as a Father, pitiest all ! 

And grant, O Father ! that the time 
Of Earth's deliverance may be near, 

When every land and tongue and clime* 
The message of Thy love shall hear ; 

When, smitten as with fire from heaven. 
The captive's chain shall sink in dust, 

And to his fettered soul be given 
The glorious freedom of the just ! 



THE YANKEE GIRL 

She sings by her wheel at that low cot- 
tage-door. 

Which the long evening shadow is stretch- 
ing before, 

With a music as sweet as the music which 
seems 

Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our 
dreams ! 

How brilliant and mirthful the light of her 

eye, 
Like a star glancing out from the blue of 

the sky ! 
And lightly and freely her dark tresses 

play 
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they ! 

Who comes in his pride to that low cot- 
tage-door, 

The haughty and rich to the humble and 
poor? 

'T is the great Southern planter, the mas- 
ter who waves 

His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of 
slaves. 

" Nay, Ellen, for shame ! Let those Yan- 
kee fools spin, 

Who would pass for our slaves with a 
change of their skin ; 



Let them toil as they will at the loom or 

the wheel, 
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to 

feel! 

"But thou art too lovely and precious a 

gem 
To be bound to their burdens and sullied 

by them ; 
For shame, Ellen, shame, cast thy bondage 

aside. 
And away to the South, as my blessing and 

pride. 

" Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps 

can wrong, 
But where flowers are blossoming all the 

year long, 
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over 

my home. 
And the lemon and orange are white in 

their bloom ! 

" Oh, come to my home, where my servants 

shall all 
Depart at thy bidding and come at thy call ; 
They shall heed thee as mistress with 

trembling and awe. 
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as 

a law." 

Oh, could ye have seen her — that pride of 

our girls — 
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her 

curls. 
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer 

could feel. 
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes 

on steel ! 

" Go back, haughty Southron ! thy treas- 
ures of gold 

Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou 
hast sold ; 

Thy home may be lovely, but round it I 
hear 

The crack of the whip and the footsteps of 
fear ! 

" And the sky of thy South may be brighter 

than ours. 
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy 

flowers : 



270 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



But dearer the blast round our mountains 

which raves, 
Than the sweet summer zephyr which 

breathes over slaves ! 

" Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may 

kneel, 
With the iron of bondage on spirit and 

heel ; 
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner 

would be 
In fetters with them, than in freedom with 

thee ! " 



THE HUNTERS OF MEN 

These lines were written when the orators of 
the American Colonization Society were de- 
manding that the free blacks should be sent to 
Africa, and opposing Emancipation unless ex- 
patriation followed. See the report of the pro- 
ceedings of the society at its annual meeting 
in 183-i. 

Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er moun- 
tain and glen. 

Through cane-brake and forest, — the hunt- 
ing of men ? 

The lords of our land to this hunting have 
gone, 

As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the 
horn ; 

Hark ! the cheer and the hallo ! the crack 
of the whip, 

And the yell of the hound as he fastens his 
grip ! 

All blithe are our hunters, and noble their 
match. 

Though hundreds are caught, there are mil- 
lions to catch. 

So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain 
and glen. 

Through cane-brake and forest, — the hunt- 
ing of men ! 

Gay luck to our hunters ! how nobly they 

ride 
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength 

of their pride ! 
The priest with his cassock flung back on 

the wind, 
Just screening the politic statesman behind ; 
The saint and the sinner, with cursing and 

prayer, 



The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there. 
And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and 

maid. 
For the good of the hunted, is lending her 

aid : 
Her foot 's in the stirrup, her hand on the 

rein. 
How blithely she rides to the hunting of 

men ! 

Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see. 

In this " land of the brave and this home of 
the free." 

Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Geor- 
gia to Maine, 

All mounting the saddle, all grasping the 
rein ; 

Right merrily hunting the black man, whose 
sin 

Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his 
skin ! 

Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at 
bay! 

Will our hunters be turned from their pur- 
pose and prey ? 

Will their hearts fail within them ? their 
nerves tremble, when 

All roughly they ride to the hunting of men? 

Ho ! alms for our hunters ! all weary and 

faint. 
Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of 

the saint. 
The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are 

still. 
Over cane-brake and river, and forest and 

hill. 
Haste, alms for our hunters ! the hunted 

once more 
Have turned from their flight with their 

backs to the shore : 
What right have they here in the home of 

the white. 
Shadowed o'er by our banner of Freedom 

and Right ? 
Ho ! alms for the hunters ! or never again 
Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting 

of men ! 

Alms, alms for our hunters ! why will ye de- 
lay, 

When their pride and their glory are melt- 
ing away ? 

The parson has turned ; for, on charge of 
his own, 



STANZAS FOR THE TIMES 



271 



Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone ? 
The politic statesman looks back with a 

sigh, 
There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in 

his eye. 
Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall 

prevail, 
And the head of liis steed take the place of 

the tail. 
Oh, haste, ere he leave us ! for who will 

ride then, 
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of 



STANZAS FOR THE TIMES 

The " Times '* referred to were those evil 
times of the pro-slavery meeting in Faneuil 
Hall, August 21, lSl3o, in which a demand was 
made for the suppression of free speech, lest it 
should endanger the foundation of commercial 
society. 

Is this the land our fathers loved, 

The freedom which they toiled to win ? 

Is this the soil whereon they moved ? 
Are these the graves they slumber in ? 

Are we the sons by whom are borne 

The mantles which the dead have worn ? 

And shall we crouch above these graves, 
With craven soul and fettered lip ? 

Yoke in with marked and branded slaves, 
And tremble at the driver's whip ? 

Bend to the earth our pliant knees, 

And speak but as our masters please ? 

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel ? 

Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow ? 
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel. 

The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow. 
Turn back the spirit roused to save 
The Truth, our Country, and the slave ? 

Of human skulls that shrine was made, 
Round wliich the priests of Mexico 

Before their loathsome idol prayed ; 
Is Freedom's altar fashioned so ? 

And must we yield to Freedom's God, 

As offering meet, the negro's blood ? 

Shall tongue be mute, when deeds are 
wrought 
Which well might shame extremest hell ? 



Shall freemen lock the indignant thought ? 

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell ? 
Shall Honor bleed ? — shall Truth suc- 
cumb ? 
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb ? 

No ; by each spot of haunted ground. 

Where Freedom weeps her children's 
fall ; 
By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's mound ; 
By Griswold's stained and shattered 
wall ; 
By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade ; 
By all the memories of our dead I 

By their enlarging souls, which burst 
The bands and fetters round them set ; 

By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed 
Within our inmost bosoms, yet, 

By all above, around, below, 

B3 ours the indignant answer, — No ! 

No ; guided by our country's laws. 

For truth, and right, and suffering man, 

Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause, 
As Christians may, as freemen can ! 

Still pouring on unwilling ears 

That truth oppression only fears. 

What ! shall we guard our neighbor still. 
While woman shrieks beneath his rod, 

And while he tramples down at will 
The image of a common God ? 

Shall wateli and ward be round him set. 

Of Northern nerve and bayonet ? 

And shall we know and share with him 
The danger and the growing shame ? 

And see our Freedom's light grow dim. 
Which should have filled the world with 
flame ? 

And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, 

A world's reproach around us burn ? 

Is 't not enough that this is borne ? 

And asks our haughty neighbor more ? 
Must fetters which his slaves have worn 

Clank round the Yankee farmer's door ? 
Must he be told, beside his plough, 
WTiat he must speak, and when, and how ? 

Must he be told his freedom stands 
On Slavery's dark foundations strong ; 

On breaking hearts and fettered hands, 
On robbery, and crime, and wrong ? 



272 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



That all his fathers taught is vain, — 
That Freedom's emblem is the chain ? 

Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn ! 

False, foul, profane ! Go, teach as well 
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born ! 

Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell ! 
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice ! 
Of Demons planting Paradise ! 

Rail on, then, brethren of the South, 
Ye shall not hear the truth the less ; 

No seal is on the Yankee's mouth. 
No fetter on the Yankee's press ! 

From our Green Mountains to the sea, 

One voice shall thunder. We are free ! 



CLERICAL OPPRESSORS 

In the report of the celebrated > pro-slavery 
meeting' in Charleston, S. C. , on the 4th of the 
ninth month, 1835, published in the Courier of 
that city, it is stated : " The clergy of all de- 
nominations attended in a body, lending their 
sanction to the proceedings, and adding by 
their presence to the imi^ressive character of 
the scene! " 

Just God ! and these are they 
Who minister at thine altar, God of Right ! 
Men who their hands with prayer and bless- 
ing lay 

On Israel's Ark of light ! 

What ! preach, and kidnap men ? 
Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted 

poor? 
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then 

Bolt hard the captive's door ? 

What ! servants of thy own 
Merciful Son, who came to seek and save 
The homeless and the outcast, fettering 
down 

The tasked and plundered slave ! 

Pilate and Herod, friends ! 
Chief priests and rulers, as of old, com- 
bine ! 
Just God and holy ! is that church, which 
lends 
Strength to the spoiler, thine ? 

Paid hypocrites, who turn 
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book 



Of those high words of truth which search 
and burn 
In warning and rebuke ; 

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed ! 
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank the 

Lord 
That, from the toiling bondman's ntterneed. 

Ye pile your own full board. 

How long, O Lord ! how long 
Shall such a priesthood barter truth away, 
And in Thy name, for robbery and wrong 

At Thy own altars pray ? 

Is not Thy hand stretched forth 
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite ? 
Shall not the living God of all the earth, 

And heaven above, do right ? 

Woe, then, to all who grind 
Their brethren of a common Father down ! 
To all who plunder from the immortal 
mind 

Its bright and glorious crown I 

Woe to the priesthood ! woe 
To those whose hire is with the price of 

blood ; 
Perverting, darkening, changing, as they 

go. 
The searching truths of God I 

Their glory and their might 
Shall perish ; and their very names shall 

be 
Vile before all the people, in the light 

Of a world's liberty. 

Oh, speed the moment on 
Wlien Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and 

Love 
And Truth and Right throughout the earth 
be known 
As in their home above. 



A SUMMONS 

Written on the adoption of Pinckney's Reso- 
lutions in the House of Representatives, and 
the passage of Calhoun's " Bill for excluding 
Papers written or printed, touching the sub- 
ject of Slavery, from the U. S. Post-office,"' in 
the Senate of the United States. 



A SUMMONS 



73 



Mr. Pinckney's resolutions were in brief that 
Congress had no authority to interfere in any 
way with shivery in the tjtates ; that it ought 
not to interfere with it in the District of Co- 
lumbia, and that all resolutions to that end 
should be laid on the table without printing. 
Mr. Calhoun's bill made it a penal offence for 
postmasters in any State, District, or Territory 
" knowingly to deliver, to any person whatever, 
any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other 
printed paper or pictorial representation, touch- 
ing the subject of slavery, where, by the laws 
of the said tttate. District, or Territory, their 
circulation was prohibited." [Originally en- 
titled Lines.] 

Men of the North-land ! where 's the manly 
spirit 
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled 
gone ? 
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit 
Their names alone ? 

Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us, 
Stoops the strong manhood of our souls 
so low, 
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can 
win us 

To silence now ? 

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is 
verging, 
In God's name, let us speak while there 
is time ! 
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are 
forging. 

Silence is crime ! 

What ! shall we henceforth humbly ask 
as favors 
Rights all our own ? In madness shall 
we barter, 
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature 
gave us, 

God and our charter ? 

Here shall the statesman forge his human 
fetters, 
Here the false jurist human rights deny, 
And in the church, their proud and skilled 
abettors 

Make truth a lie ? 

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible, 
To sanction crime, and robbery, and 
blood ? 



And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel 
Both man and God ? 

Shall our New England stand erect no 
longer. 
But stoop in chains upon her downward 
way, 
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger 
Day after day ? 

Oh no ; methinks from all her wildj green 
mountains ; 
From valleys where her slumbering 
fathers lie ; 
From her blue rivers and her welling 
fountains. 

And clear, cold sky ; 

From her rough coast, and isles, which 
hungry Ocean 
Gnaws with his surges ; from the fish- 
er's skiff, 
With white sail swaying to the "billow's mo- 
tion 

Round rock and cliff ; 

From the free fireside of her unbought 
farmer ; 
From her free laborer at his loom and 
wheel ; 
From the brown smith-shop, where, be- 
neath the hammer. 
Rings the red steel ; 

From each and all, if God hath not forsaken 

Our land, and left us to an evil choice, 
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall 
waken 

A People's voice. 

Startling and stern ! the Northern winds 
shall bear it 
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave ; 
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it 
Within her grave. 

Oh, let that voice go forth ! The bond- 
man sighing 
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane, 
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying. 
Revive again. 



Let 



it go forth ! 
gazing 



The millions who are 



Sadly upon us from afar shall smile, 



274 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And unto God devout thanksgiving raising, 
Bless us the wliile. 

Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and 
holy, 
For the deliverance of a groaning earth, 
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, 
and lowly. 

Let it go forth ! 

Sons of the best of fathers ! will ye fal- 
ter 
With all they left ye perilled and at 
stake ? 
Ho ! once again on Freedom's holy altar 
The fire awake ! 

Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come to- 
gether. 
Put on the harness for the moral fight, 
And, with the blessing of your Heavenly 
Father, 

Maintain the right I 



TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS 
SHIPLEY 

Thomas Shipley of Philadelphia was a life- 
long Christian philanthropist, and advocate 
of emancipation. At his funeral thoiisands of 
colored people came to take their last look at 
their friend and protector. He died Septem- 
ber 17, 1836. 

Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest ! 

The flowers of Eden round thee blow- 
ing? 
And on thine ear the murmurs blest 

Of Siloa's waters softly flowing ! 
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives 
To all the earth its healing leaves 
In the white robe of angels clad. 

And wandering by that sacred river. 
Whose streams of holiness make glad 

The city of our God forever ! 

Gentlest of spirits ! not for thee 

Our tears are shed, our sighs are given ; 

Why mourn to know thou art a free 
Partaker of the joys of heaven ? 

Finished thy work, and kept thy faith 

In Christian firmness unto death ; 

And beautiful as sky and earth, 



When autumn's sun is downward going, 
The blessed memory of thy worth 

Around thy place of slumber glowing J 

But woe for us ! who linger still 

With feebler strength and hearts less 
lowly. 
And minds less steadfast to the will 

Of Him whose every work is holy. 
For not like thine, is crucified 
The spirit of our human pride : 
And at the bondman's tale of woe. 

And for the outcast and forsaken. 
Not warm like thine, but cold and sloT7j 

Our weaker sympathies awaken. 

Darkly upon our struggling way 

The storm of human hate is sweeping ; 
Hunted and branded, and a prey. 

Our watch amidst the darkness keeping, 
Oh, for that hidden strength which can 
Nerve unto death the inner man ! 
Oh, for thy spirit, tried and true. 

And constant in the hour of trial, 
Prepared to suffer, or to do. 

In meekness and in self-denial. 

Oh, for that spirit, meek and mild. 

Derided, spurned, yet uncomplaining ; 
By man deserted and reviled. 

Yet faithful to its trust remaining. 
Still prompt and resolute to save 
From scourge and chain the hunted slave ; 
Unwavering in the Truth's defence. 

Even where the fires of Hate were burn- 
ing.. , 
The unquailing eye of innocence 

Alone upon the oppressor turning ! 

O loved of thousands ! to thy grave. 

Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore 
thee. 
The poor man and the rescued slave 

Wept as the broken earth closed o'er 
thee ; 
And grateful tears, like summer rain, 
Quickened its dying grass again ! 
And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine, 

Shall come the outcast and the lowly, 
Of gentle deeds and words of thine 

Recalling memories sweet and holy ! 

Oh, for the death the righteous die ! 
An end, like autumn's day declining, 



RITNER 



275 



On limuan hearts, as on the sky, 

With liolier, tenderer beauty shining ; 

As to the parting soul were given 

The radiance of an opening heaven ! 

As if that pure and blessed light, 
From off the Eternal altar Howing, 

Were bathing, in its upward flight. 
The spirit to its worship going ! 



THE MORAL WARFARE 

When Freedom, on her natal day, 
AVithin her war-rocked cradle lay, 
An iron race around her stood. 
Baptized her infant brow in blood ; 
And, through the storm which round her 

swept, 
Their constant ward and watching kept. 

Then, where our quiet herds repose, 
The roar of baleful battle rose. 
And brethren of a common tongue 
To mort.al strife as tigers sprung. 
And every gift on Freedom's shrine 
Was man for beast, and blood for wine ! 

Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
Their strife is past, their triumph won ; 
But sterner trials wait the race 
Which rises in their honored place ; 
A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time. 

So let it be. In God's own might 

We gird us for the coming fight, 

And, strong in Him whose cause is ours 

In conflict with unholy powers, 

We grasp the weapons He has given, — 

The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven. 



RITNER 

Written on reading' the Message of Governor 
Ritner, of Pennsylvania, 1836. The fact re- 
dounds to the credit and serves to perpetuate 
the memory of the independent farmer and 
high-souled statesman, that he alone of all the 
Governors of the Union in ISoG met the insulting 
demands and menaces of the South in a manner 
becoming a freeman and hater of Slavery, in 
his message to the Legislature of Pennsylvania. 
[Originally entitled Lines.] 



Thank God for the token ! one lip is still 

free, 
One spirit untrammelled, unbending one 

knee ! 
Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted 

and firm, 
Erect, when the multitude bends to the 

storm ; 
When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, 

and God, 
Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood ; 
When the recreant North has forgotten her 

trust, 
And the lip of her honor is low in the dust, — 
Thank God, that one arm from the shackle 

has broken ! 
Thank God, that one man as a freeman has 

spoken ! 

O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has been 

blown ! 
Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the murmur 

has gone ! 
To the land of the South, of the charter and 

chain. 
Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's pain ; 
Where the cant of Democracy dwells on the 

lips 
Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of 

whips ! 
Where " chivalric " honor means really no 

more 
Than scourging of women, and robbing the 

poor ! 
Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on 

high, 
And the words which he utters, are — Wor- 
ship, or die ! 

Right onward, oh, speed it ! Wherever the 

blood 
Of the wronged and the guiltless is crying 

to God ; 
Wlierever a slave in his fetters is pining ; 
Wherever the lash of the driver is twining ; 
Wherever from kindred, torn rudely apart, 
Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken of 

heart ; 
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind. 
In silence and darkness, the God -given 

mind ; 
There, God speed it onward ! its truth will 

be felt, 
The bonds shall be loosened, the iron shall 

melt! 



Z'jfy 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And oh, will the laud where the free soul 

of Penu 
Still lingers and breathes over mountain and 

glen ; 
Will tiie laud where a Benezet's spirit 

wont forth 
To the peeled and the meted, and outcast 

of Earth ; 
Where the words of the Charter of Liberty 

first 
From the soul of the sage and the patriot 

burst ; 
Where first for the wronged and the weak 

of their kind, 
The Christian and statesman their efforts 

combined ; 
Will that laud of the free and the good 

wear a chain ? 
Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be 

vain ? 

No, Ritner ! her " Friends " at thy warn- 
ing shall stand 
Erect for the truth, like their aucestral 

band ; 
Forgetting the feuds and the strife of past 

time, 
Counting coldness injustice, and silence a 

crime ; 
Turning back from the cavil of creeds, to 

unite 
Once again for the poor in defence of the 

Right ; 
Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full tide 

of Wrong, 
Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges 

along ; 
Unappalled by the danger, the shame, and 

the pain. 
And counting each trial for Truth as their 

gain ! 

And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest 

and true, 
Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due ; 
Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert 

with thine, 
On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the 

Rhine, — 
The German-born pilgrims, who first dared 

to brave 
The scorn of the proud in the cause of the 

slave ; 
Will the sons of such men yield the lords 

of the South 



One brow for the brand, for the padlock 

one mouth ? 
They cater to tyrants ? They rivet the 

chain. 
Which their fathers smote off, on the negro 



No, never ! one voice, like the sound in the 

cloud. 
When the roar of the storm waxes loud 

and more loud. 
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath 

pressed 
From the Delaware's marge to the Lake 

of the West, 
On the South-going breezes shall deepen 

and grow 
Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble 

below ! 
The voice of a people, uprisen, awake, 
Pennsylvania's watchword, with Freedom 

at stake. 
Thrilling up from each valley, flung down 

from each height, 
" Our Country and Liberty ! God for the 

Right ! " 



THE PASTORAL LETTER 

The General Association of Congregational 
ministers in Massachusetts met at Brookfield, 
June 27, 1S37, and issued a Pastoral Letter to 
the churches under its care. The immediate 
occasion of it was the profound sensation pro- 
duced by the recent public lecture in Massa- 
chusetts by AngeMiia and Sarah Grimk^, two 
noble women from South Carolina, who bore 
their testimony against slavery. The Letter 
demanded that " the perplexed and agitating 
subjects which are now common amongst us 
. . . should not be forced upon any church 
as matters for debate, at the hazard of aliena- 
tion and division," and called attention to the 
dangers now seeming " to threaten the female 
character with widespread and permanent in- 
jury." 

So, this is all, — the utmost reach 

Of priestly power the mind to fetter ! 
When laymen think, when women preach, 

A war of words, a " Pastoral Letter ! " 
Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes ! 

Was it thus with those, your predecessors, 
Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes 

Their loving-kindness to transgressors ? 



THE PASTORAL LETTER 



277 



A " Pastoral Letter," grave and dull ; 

Alas ! iu hoof and horns and features, 
How different is your Brooktield bull 

From him who bellows from St. Peter's ! 
Your pastoral rights and powers from harm, 

Think ye, can words alone preserve them? 
Your wiser fathers taught the arm 

And sword of temporal power to serve 
them. 

Oh, glorious days, when Church and State 

Were wedded by your spiritual fathers ! 
And on submissive shoidders sat 

Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers. 
No vile " itinerant " then could mar 

The beauty of your tranquil Zion, 
But at his peril of the scar 

Of hangman's whip and branding-iron. 

Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church 

Of heretic and mischief-maker. 
And priest and bailiff joined in search, 

By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker ! 
The stocks were at each church's door. 

The gallows stood on Boston Common, 
A Papist's ears the pillory bore, — 

The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman ! 

Your fathers dealt not as ye deal 

AVith " non-professing " frantic teachers ; 
Tliey bored the tongue with red-hot steel, 

And flayed the backs of " female preach- 
ers." 
Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue. 

And Salem's streets could tell their story. 
Of fainting woman dragged along. 

Gashed by the whip accursed and gory ! 

And will ye ask me, why this taunt 

Of memories sacred from the scorner ? 
And why with reckless hand I plant 

A nettle on the graves ye honor ? 
Not to reproach New England's dead 

This record from the past I summon, 
Of manhood to the scaffold led. 

And suffering and heroic woman. 

No, for yourselves alone, I turn 

The pages of intolerance over, 
That, in their spirit, dark and stern. 

Ye haply may your own discover ! 
For, if ye claim the " pastoral right " 

To silence Freedom's voice of warning. 
And from your precincts shut the light 

Of Freedom's day around ye dawning ; 



If when an earthquake voice of power 
And signs in earth and heaven are show- 
ing 

That forth, in its appointed hour, 
The Spirit of the Lord is going ? 

And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light 
On kindred, tongue, and people break- 

Whose slumbering millions, at the sight, 
In glory and in strength are waking ! 

When for the sighing of the poor. 

And for the needy, God hath risen. 
And chains are breaking, and a door 

Is opening for the souls in prison ! 
If then ye would, with puny hands, 

Arrest the very work of Heaven, 
And bind anew the evil bands 

Which God's right arm of power hath 



What marvel that, in many a mind, 

Those darker deeds of bigot madness 
Are closely with your own combined, 

Yet " less in anger than in sadness " ? 
What marvel, if the people learn 

To claim the right of free opinion ? 
What marvel, if at times they spurn 

The ancient yoke of your dominion ? 

A glorious remnant linger yet, 

Whose lips are wet at Freedom's foun- 
tains, 
The coming of whose welcome feet 

Is beautifid iipon our mountains ! 
Men, who the gospel tidings bring 

Of Liberty and Love forever. 
Whose joy is an abiding spring, 

Whose peace is as a gentle river ! 

But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale 

Of Carolina's high-souled daughters. 
Which echoes here the mournful wail 

Of sorrow from Edisto's waters. 
Close while ye may the public ear, 

With malice vex, with slander wound 
them. 
The pure and good shall throng to hear. 

And tried and manly hearts surround 
them. 

Oh, ever may the power which led 
Their way to such a fiery trial, 

And strengthened womanhood to tread 
The wine-press of such self-denial, 



278 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Be round them in an evil land, 

With wisdom and with strength from 
Heaven, 
With Miiiani's voice, and Judith's hand, 

And Deborah's song, for triumph given ! 

And what are ye who strive with God 

Against the ark of His salvation, 
Moved by the breath of prayer abroad, 

With blessings for a dying nation ? 
What, but the stubble and the hay 

To perish, even as flax consuming, 
With all that bars His glorious way, 

Before the brightness of His coming ? 

And thou, sad Angel, who so long 

Hast waited for the glorious token. 
That Earth from all her bonds of wrong 

To liberty and light has broken, — 
Angel of Freedom ! soon to thee 

The sounding trumpet shall be given. 
And over Earth's full jubilee 

Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven ! 



HYMN 

Written for the celebration of the third an- 
niversary of British emancipation, at the Broad- 
way Tabernacle, New York, first of August, 
1837. [Originally entitled Lines.] 

O Holy Father ! just and true 

Are all Thy works and words and ways, 
And unto Thee alone are due 

Thanksgiving and eternal praise ! 
As children of Thy gracious care. 

We veil the eye, we bend the knee. 
With broken words of praise and prayer, 

Father and God, we come to Thee. 

For Thou hast heard, O God of Right, 

The sighing of the island slave ; 
And stretched for him the arm of might, 

Not shortened that it could not save. 
The laborer sits beneath his vine, 

The shackled soul and hand are free ; 
Thanksgiving ! for the work is Thine ! 

Praise ! for the blessing is of Thee ! 

And oh, we feel Thy presence here. 
Thy awful arm in judgment bare ! 

Thine eye hath seen the bondman's tear ; 
Thine ear hath heard the bondman's 
prayer. 



Praise ! for the pride of man is low. 
The counsels of the wise are naught, 

The fountains of repentance flow ; 

What hath our God in mercy wrought ? 

Speed on Thy work. Lord God of Hosts ! 

And when the bondman's chain is riven, 
And swells from all our guilty coasts 

The anthem of the free to Heaven, 
Oh, not to those whom Thou hast led, 

As with Thy cloud and fire before, 
But unto Thee, in fear and dread. 

Be praise and glory evermore. 



THE FAREWELL 

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER 
DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN 
BONDAGE 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings. 
Where the noisome insect stings. 
Where the fever demon strews 
Poison with the falling dews. 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hot and misty air ; 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters ; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters i 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
There no mother's eye is near them, 
There no mother's ear can hear them ; 
Never, when the torturing lash 
Seams their back with many a gash, 
Shall a mother's kindness bless them, 
Or a mother's arms caress them. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From Virginia's hills and waters ; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters 1 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow, 
From the fields at night they go. 
Faint with toil, and racked with pain, 
To their cheerless homes again. 
There no brother's voice shall greet theoi; 
There no father's welcome meet them. 



PENNSYLVANIA HALL 



279 



Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters ; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From the tree whose shadow lay 
On their childhood's place of play ; 
From the cool spring where they drank 
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank ; 
From the solemn house of prayer, 
And the holy counsels there ; 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
* From Virginia's hills and waters ; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone ; 
Toiling through the weary day, 
And at night the spoiler's prey. 
Oh, that they had earlier died, 
Sleeping calmly, side by side. 
Where the tyrant's power is o'er, 
And the fetter galls no more ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters ; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
By the holy love He beareth ; 
By the bruised reed He spareth ; 
Oh, may He, to whom alone 
All their cruel wrongs are known, 
Still their hope and refuge prove. 
With a more than mother's love. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From Virginia's hills and waters ; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 



PENNSYLVANIA HALL 

Read at the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall, 
Philadelphia, May 15, 7888. The building was 
erected by an association of gentlemen, irre- 
spective of sect or party. " that the citizens of 
Philadelphia should possess a room wherein 
the principles of Liberty, and Equality of Civil 
Rights, could be freely discussed, and the evils 
of slavery fearlessly portrayed." On the even- 
ing of the 17th it was burned by a mob, de- 



stroying the office of the Pennsylvania Free- 
man, of which I was editor, and with it my 
books and papers. 

Not with the splendors of the days of old. 
The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold ; 
No weapons wrested from the fields of 

blood. 
Where dark and stern the unyielding Ro- 
man stood. 
And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw 
A world, war-wasted, crouching to his law ; 
Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating gay. 
Like those which swept along tlie Appiaa 

Way, 
When, to the welcome of imperial Rome, 
The victor warrior came in triumph home, 
And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild and 

high. 
Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian sky ; 
But calm and grateful, prayerful and sin- 
cere. 
As Christian freemen only, gathering here. 
We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall, 
Pillar and arch, entablature and wall. 
As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode. 
Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's God ! 
Far statelier Halls, 'neath brighter skies 

than these. 
Stood darkly mirrored in the .^geau seas. 
Pillar and shrine, and life-like statues seen. 
Graceful and pure, the marble shafts be- 
tween ; 
Where glorious Athens from her rocky hill 
Saw Art and Beauty subject to her will ; 
And the chaste temple, and the classic 

grove. 
The hall of sages, and the bowers of love. 
Arch, fane, and column, graced the shores, 

and gave 
Their shadows to the blue Saronic wave ; 
And statelier rose on Tiber's winding side, 
The Pantheon's dome, the Coliseum's pride, 
The Capitol, whose arches backward flung 
The deep, clear cadence of the Roman 

tongue. 
Whence stern decrees, like words of fate, 

went forth 
To the awed nations of a conquered earth. 
Where the proud Csesars in their glory 

came, 
And Brutus lightened from his lips of 

flame ! 
Yet in the porches of Athena's halls, 
And in the shadow of her stately walls, 



28o 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Lurked the sad bondman, and bis tears of 

woe 
Wet the cold marble with unheeded flow ; 
And fetters clanked beneath the silver 

dome 
Of the proud Pantheon of imperious Rome. 
Oh, not for him, the chained and stricken 

slave, 
By Tiber's shore, or blue iEgina's wave, 
In the thronged forum, or the sages' seat, 
The bold lip pleaded, and the warm heart 

beat ; 
No soul of sorrow melted at his pain. 
No tear of pity rusted on his chain ! 

But this fair Hall to Truth and Freedom 

given, 
Pledged to the Right before all Earth and 

Heaven, 
A free arena for the strife of mind. 
To caste, or sect, or color unconfined, 
Shall thrill with echoes such as ne'er of 

old 
From Roman hall or Grecian temple rolled ; 
Thoughts shall find utterance such as never 

yet 
The Propylea or the Forum met. 
Beneath its roof no gladiator's strife 
Shall win applauses with the waste of life ; 
No lordly lictor urge the barbarous game, 
No wanton Lais glory in her shame. 
But here the tear of sympathy shall flow, 
As the ear listens to the tale of woe ; 
Here in stern judgment of the oppressor's 

wrong 
Shall strong rebukings thrill on Freedom's 

tongue, 
No partial justice hold th' unequal scale, 
No pride of caste a brother's rights assail, 
No tyrant's mandates echo from this wall, 
Holy to Freedom and tlie Rights of All ! 
But a fair field, where mind may close with 

mind. 
Free as the sunshine and the chainless wind ; 
Where the high trust is fixed on Truth 

alone, 
And bonds and fetters from the soul are 

thrown ; 
Where wealth, and rank, and worldly pomp, 

and might. 
Yield to the presence of the True and Right. 

And fitting is it that this Hall should stand 
Where Pennsylvania's Founder led his band, 
From thy blue waters, Delaware ! — to press 



Tlie virgin verdure of the wilderness. 

Here, where all Europe with amazement 
saw 

The soul's high freedom trammelled by nc 
law ; 

Here, where the fierce and warlike forest- 
men 

Gathered, in peace, around the home of 
Penn, 

Awed by the weapons Love alone had given 

Drawn from the holy armory of Heaven ; 

Where Nature's voice against the bondman's 
wrong 

First found an earnest and indignant 
tongue ; 

Where Lay's bold message to the proud 
was borne ; 

And Keith's rebuke, and Franklin's manly 
scorn ! 

Fitting it is that here, where Freedom first 

From her fair feet shook off the Old World's 
dust, 

Spread her white pinions to our Western 
blast, 

And her free tresses to our sunshine cast, 

One Hall should rise redeemed from Sla- 
very's ban, 

One Temple sacred to the Rights of Man ! 

Oh ! if the spirits of the parted come, 
Visiting angels, to their olden home ; 
If the dead fathers of the land look forth 
From their fair dwellings, to the things of 

earth, 
Is it a dream, that with their eyes of love, 
They gaze now on us from the bowers above? 
Lay's ardent soul, and Benezet the mild. 
Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child. 
Meek-hearted Woolman, and that brother- 
band. 
The sorrowing exiles from their " Father- 
land," 
Leaving their homes in Krieshiem's bowers 

of vine, 
And the blue beauty of their glorious Rhine, 
To seek amidst our solemn depths of wood 
Freedom from man, and holy peace with 

God ; 
Who first of all their testimonial gave 
Against the oppressor, for the outcast slave. 
Is it a dream that such as these look down, 
And with their blessing our rejoicings 

crown ? 
Let us rejoice, that while the pulpit's door 
Is barred against the pleaders for the poor ; 



THE NEW YEAR 



281 



While the Church, wrangling upon points 

of faith, 
Forgets her bondmen suffering unto death ; 
While crafty Traffic and the lust of Gain 
Unite to forge Oppression's triple chain. 
One door is open, and one Temple free, 
As a resting-place for himted Liberty ! 
Where men may speak, unshackled and 

unawed, 
High words of Truth, for Freedom and for 

God. 
And when that truth its perfect work hath 

done, 
And rich with blessings o'er our land hath 

gone ; 
When not a slave beneath his yoke shall 

pine. 
From broad Potomac to the far Sabine : 
When unto angel lips at last is given 
The silver trump of Jubilee in Heaven '. 
And from Virginia's plains, Kentucky's 

shades, 
And through the dim Floridian everglades. 
Rises, to meet that angel-trnmpet's sound, 
The voice of millions from their chains un- 
bound ; 
Then, though this Hall be crumbling in de- 
cay, 
Its strong walls blending with the common 

clay, 
Yet round the ruins of its strength shall 

stand 
The best and noblest of a ransomed land — 
Pilgrims, like these who throng around the 

shrine 
Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine ! 
A prouder glory shall that ruiu own 
Than that which lingers round the Parthe- 
non. 
Here shall the child of after years be taught 
The works of Freedom which his fathers 

wrought ; 
Told of the trials of the present hour, 
Our weary strife with prejudice and power ; 
How the high errand quickened woman's 

soul, 
And touched her lip as with a living coal ; 
How Freedom's martyrs kept their lofty 

faith 
True and unwavering, unto bonds and death; 
The pencil's art shall sketch the ruined 

Hall, 
The Muses' garland crown its aged wall, 
And History's pen for after times record 
Its consecration mxto Freedom's God ! 



THE NEW YEAR 

Addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania 
Freeman. 

The wave is breaking on the shore, 
The echo fading from the chime ; 

Again the shadow moveth o'er 
The dial-plate of time ! 

O seer-seen Angel ! waiting now 
With weary feet on sea and shore, 

Impatient for the last dread vow 
That time shall be no more ! 

Once more across thy sleepless eye 
The semblance of a smile has passed : 

The year departing leaves more nigh 
Time's fearfullest and last. 

Oh, in that dying year hath been 
The sum of all since time began ; 

The birth and death, the joy and pain, 
Of Nature and of Man. 

Spring, with her change of sun and shower. 
And streams released from Winter's 
chain, 

And bursting bud, and opening flower, 
And greenly growing grain ; 

And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm. 
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed. 

And voices in her rising storm ; 
God speaking from His cloud ! 

And Autumn's fruits and clustering sheaves, 
And soft, warm days of golden light, 

The glory of her forest leaves. 
And harvest-moon at night ; 

And Winter with her leafless grove, 

And prisoned stream, and drifting snow, 

The brilliance of her heaven above 
And of her earth below : 

And man, in whom an angel's mind 
With earth's low instincts finds abode, 

The highest of the links which bind 
Brute nature to her God ; 

His infant eye hath seen the light. 

His childhood's merriest laughter rung, 

And active sports to manlier might 
The nerves of boyhood strung 1 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Aud quiet love, and passion's fires, 

Have soothed or burned in mauliood's 
breast, 

And lofty aims and low desires 
By turns disturbed his rest. 

The wailing of the newly-born 

Has mingled with the funeral knell ; 

And o'er the dying's ear has gone 
The merry marriage-bell. 

And Wealth has filled his halls with mirth, 
While Want, in many a humble shed, 

Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth. 
The live-long night for bread. 

And worse than all, the human slave, 
The sport of lust, aud pride, and scorn ! 

Plucked off the crown his Maker gave, 
His regal manhood gone ! 

Oh, still, my country ! o'er thy plains. 
Blackened with slavery's blight and ban, 

That human chattel drags his chains, 
An uncreated man ! 

And still, where'er to sun and breeze, 
My country, is thy flag unrolled. 

With scorn, the gazing stranger sees 
A stain on every fold. 

Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down ! 

It gathers scorn from every eye, 
And despots smile and good men frown 

Whene'er it passes by. 

Shame ! shame ! its starry splendors glow 
Above the slaver's loathsome jail ; 

Its folds are ruffling even now 
His crimson flag of sale. 

Still round our country's proudest hall 
The trade in human flesh is driven, 

And at each careless hammer-fall 
A human heart is riven. 

And this, too, sanctioned by the men 
Vested with power to shield the right, 

And throw each vile aud robber den 
Wide open to the light. 

Yet, shame upon them ! there they sit. 
Men of the North, subdued and still ; 

Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit 
To work a master's will. 



Sold, bargained off for Southern votes, 
A passive herd of Northern mules. 

Just braying through their purchased 
throats 
Whate'er their owner rules. 

And he, the basest of the base, 

The vilest of the vile, whose name, 

Embalmed in infinite disgrace, 
Is deathless in its shame ! 

A tool, to bolt the people's door 

Against the people clamoring there, 

An ass, to trample on their floor 
A people's right of prayer 1 

Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast, 
Self-pilloried to the public view, 

A mark for every passing blast 
Of scorn to whistle through ; 

There let him hang, and hear the boast 
Of Southrons o'er their pliant tool, — 

A new Stylites on his post, 
" Sacred to ridicule ! " 

Look we at home ! our noble hall, 
To Freedom's holy purpose given, 

Now rears its black and ruined wall, 
Beneath the wintry heaven. 

Telling the story of its doom. 

The fiendish mob, the prostrate law. 

The fiery jet through midnight's gloom. 
Our gazing thousands saw. 

Look to our State ! the poor man's right 
Torn from him : and the sons of those 

Whose blood in Freedom's sternest fight 
Sprinkled the Jersey snows. 

Outlawed within the land of Penn, 

That Slavery's guilty fears might cease, 

And those whom God created men 
Toil on as brutes in peace. 

Yet o'er the blackness of the storm 
A bow of promise bends on high. 

And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm. 
Break through our clouded sky. 

East, West, and North, the shout is heard, 
Of freemen rising for the right : 

Each valley hath its rallying word, 
Each hill its signal light. 



THE RELIC 



283 



O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray 

The streugtheiiing light of freedom 
sliines, 

Rhode Ishiud's Narragansett Bay, 
Aud Vermont's snovv-lmng pines I 

From Hudson's frowning palisades 
To Alleghany's laurelled crest, 

O'er lakes and prairies, streams and glades, 
It shines upon the West. 

Speed on the light to those who dwell 
In Slavery's land of woe and sin. 

And through the blackness of that Hell 
Let Heaven's own light break in. 

So shall the Southern conscience quake 
Before tliat light poured full and strong, 

So shall the Southern heart awake 
To all the bondman's wrong. 

And from that rich and sunny land 
The song of grateful millions rise. 

Like that of Israel's ransomed band 
Beneath Arabia's skies : 

And all who now are bound beneath 
Our banner's shade, our eagle's wing, 

From Slavery's night of moral death 
To light and life shall spring. 

Bi'oken the bondman's chain, and gone 
The master's guilt, and iiate, and fear. 

And unto both alike shall dawn 
A New and Happy Year. 

THE RELIC 

Written on receiving' a cane wrought from a 
fragment of the wood-work of Pennsylvania 
Hall which the fire had spared. 

Token of friendship true and tried, 
From one whose fiery heart of youth 

With mine has beaten, side by side, 
For Liberty and Truth ; 

With honest pride the gift I take. 

And prize it for the giver's sake. 

But not alone because it tells 

Of generous hand and heart sincere ; 

Around that gift of friendship dwells 
A memory doubly dear ; 

Earth's noblest aim, man's holiest thought. 

With that memorial frail inwrought ! 



Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold, 
And precious memories round it cling, 

Even as the Prophet's rod of old 
In beauty blossoming : 

And buds of feeling, pure and good. 

Spring from its cold unconscious wood. 

Relic of Freedom's shrine ! a brand 
Plucked from its burning ! let it be 

Dear as a jewel from the hand 
Of a lost friend to me ! 

Flower of a perished garland left, 

Of life and beauty unbereft ! 

Oh, if the young enthusiast bears. 
O'er weary waste and sea, the stone 

Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs, 
Or round the Parthenon ; 

Or olive-bough from some wild tree 

Hung over old Thermopylae : 

If leaflets from some hero's tomb, 

Or moss-wreath torn from ruins hoary ; 

Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom 
On fields renowned in story ; 

Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest, 

Or the gray rock by Druids blessed ; 

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing 
Where Freedom led her stalwart kern. 

Or Scotia's " rough bur thistle " blowing 
On Bruce's Bannockburn ; 

Or Runnymede's wild English rose. 

Or lichen plucked from Sempach's snows ! 

If it be true that things like these 

To heart and eye bright visions bring, 

Shall not far holier memories 
To this memorial cling ? 

Which needs no mellowing mist of time 

To hide the crimson stains of crime ! 

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned ; 

Of courts where Peace with Freedom trod 
Lifting on high, with hands unstained. 

Thanksgiving unto God ; 
Where Mercy's voice of love was pleading 
For human hearts in bondage bleeding ! 

Where, midst the sound of rushing feet 
And curses on the night-air flung, 

That pleading voice rose calm and sweet 
From woman's earnest tongue ; 

And Riot turned his scowling glance, 

Awed, from her tranquil countenance! 



284 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



That temple now in ruin lies ! 

The fire-stain on its shattered wall, 
And open to the changing skies 

Its black and roofless hall, 
It stands before a nation's sight, 
A gravestone over buried Right ! 

But from that ruin, as of old, 

The fire-scorched stones themselves are 
crying. 
And from their ashes white and cold 

Its timbers are replying J 
A voice which slavery cannot kill 
Speaks from the crumbling arches still ! 

And even this relic from thy shrine, 

O holy Freedom ! hath to me 
A potent power, a voice and sign 

To testify of thee ; 
And, grasping it, methinks I feel 
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal. 

And not unlike that mystic rod. 

Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian wave, 
Which opened, in the strength of God, 

A pathway for the slave, 
It yet may point the bondman's way, 
And turn the spoiler from his prey. 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION 

OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION, 
HELD IN LONDON IN 1840 

Joseph Sturg-e, the founder of the British 
and Foreign Anti- Slavery Society, proposed 
the calling of a world's anti-slavery convention, 
and the proposal was promptly seconded by 
the American Anti-Slavery Society. The call 
was adressed to " friends of the slave of every 
nation and of every clime." 

Yes, let them gather ! Summon forth 
The pledged philanthropy of Earth. 
From every land, whose hills have heard 
The bugle blast of Freedom waking ; 
Or shrieking of her symbol-bird 

From out his cloudy eyrie breaking : 
Where Justice hath one worshipper, 
Or truth one altar built to her ; 
Where'er a human eye is weeping 

O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children 
know ; 
Where'er a single heart is keeping 

Its prayerf lU. watch with human woe : 



Thence let them come, and greet eacU 

other. 
And know in each a friend and brother ! 

Yes, let them come ! from each green vale 

Where England's old baronial halls 
Still bear upon their storied walls 
The grim crusader's rusted mail. 
Battered by Paynim spear and brand 
On Malta's rock or Syria's sand ! 
And mouldering pennon-staves once set 

Within the soil of Palestine, 
By Jordan and Genuesaret ; 

Or, borne with England's battle line, 
O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping. 
Or, midst the camp their banners drooping, 

With dews from hallowed Hermon wet, 
A holier summons now is given 
Than that gray hermit's voice of old, 
Which unto all the winds of heaven 

The banners of the Cross unrolled ! 
Not for the long-deserted shrine ; 

Not for the dull unconscious sod, 
Which tells not by one lingering sign 

That there the hope of Israel trod ; 
But for that truth, for which alone 

In pilgrim eyes are sanctified 
The garden moss, the mountain stone, 
Whereon His holy sandals pressed, — 
The fountain which His lip hath blessed, — 
Whate'er hath touched His garment's hem 

At Bethany or Bethlehem, 

Or Jordan's river-side. 
For Freedom in the name of Him 

Who came to raise Earth's drooping poor, 
To break the chain from every linib, 
The bolt from every prison door ! 
For these, o'er all the earth hath passed 
An ever-deepening trumpet blast, 
As if an angel's breath had lent 
Its vigor to the instrument. 

And Wales, from Snowden's mountain wall, 
Shall startle at that thrilling call. 

As if she heard her bards again ; 
And Erin's " harp on Tara's wall " 

Give out its ancient strain. 
Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal, — 

The melody which Erin loves. 
When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of glad- 
ness 
And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness. 

The hand of her O'Connell moves ! 
Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill, 
And mountain hold, and heathery hill. 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION 



28s 



Shall catch and echo back the note, 
As if she heard upon the air 
Ouce piore her Canieronian's prayer 

And song of Freedom float. 
And cheering echoes shall reply 
From each remote dependency, 
Where Britain's mighty sway is known, 
In tropic sea or frozen zone ; 
Where'er her sunset flag is furling, 
Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling ; 
From Indian Bengal's groves of palm 
And rosy fields and gales of balm. 
Where Eastern pomp and power are roUed 
Through regal Ava's gates of gold ; 
And from the lakes and ancient woods 
And dim Canadian solitudes, 
Wlience, sternly from her rocky throne, 
Queen of the North, Quebec looks down ; 
And from those bright and ransomed Isles 
Where all unwonted Freedom smiles. 
And the dark laborer still retains 
The scar of slavery's broken chains ! 

From the hoar Alps, which sentinel 
The gateways of the land of Tell, 
Where morning's keen and earliest glance 

On Jura's rocky wall is thrown, 
And from the olive bowers of France 

And vine groves garlanding the Rhone, — 
" Friends of the Blacks," as true and tried 
As those who stood by Oge's side. 
And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong. 
Shall gather at that summons strong ; 
Broglie, Passy, and he whose song 
Breathed over Syria's holy sod, 
And in the paths which Jesus trod. 
And murmured midst the hills which hem 
Crownless and sad Jerusalem, 
Hath echoes wheresoe'er the tone 
Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known. 

Still let them come ; from Quito's walls. 

And from the Orinoco's tide, 
From Lima's Inea-haunted halls, 
From Santa Fe and Yucatan, — 

Men who by swart Guerrero's side 
Proclaimed the deathless rights of man, 

Broke every bond and fetter off, 

And hailed in every sable serf 
A free and brother Mexican ! 
Chiefs who across the Andes' chain 

Have followed Freedom's flowing pennon, 
And seen on Junin's fearful plain. 
Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain 

The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon ! 



And Hayti, from her momitain land. 

Shall send the sons of those who hurled 
Defiance from her blazing strand. 
The war-gage from her Petion's hand, 
Alone against a hostile world. 

Nor all unmindful, thou, the while. 
Land of the dark and mystic Nile ! 

Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame 

All tyrants of a Christian name. 
When in the shade of Gizeh's pile, 
Or, where, from Abyssinian hills 
El Gerek's upper fountain fills. 
Or where from Mountains of the Moon 
El Abiad bears his watery boon, 
Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim 

Within their ancient hallowed waters ; 
Where'er is heard the Coptic hymn. 

Or song of Nubia's sable daughters ; 
The curse of slavery and the crime, 
Thy bequest from remotest time, 
At thy dark Mehemet's decree 
Forevermore shall pass from thee ; 

And chains forsake each captive's limb 
Of all those tribes, whose hills arovmd 
Have echoed back the cymbal sound 

And victor horn of Ibrahim. 

And thou whose glory and whose crime 
To earth's remotest bound and clime, 
In mingled tones of awe and scorn, 
The echoes of a world have borne. 
My country ! glorious at thy birth, 
A day-star flashing brightly forth. 

The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn ! 
Oh, who could dream that saw thee then, 

And watched thy rising from afar. 
That vapors from oppression's fen 

Would cloud the upward tending star ? 
Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which heard, 

Awe-struck, the shout which hailed thy 
dawning, 
Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and kino'. 
To mock thee with their welcoming. 
Like Hades when her thrones were stirred 

To greet the down-cast Star of Morning ! 
" Aha ! and art thou fallen thus ? 
Art thou become as one of us ? " 

Land of my fathers ! there will stand. 
Amidst that world-assembled band. 
Those owning thy maternal claim 
Unweakened by thy crime and shame ; 
The sad reprovers of thy wrong ; 
The children thou hast spurned so long. 



2S6 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Still with affection's fondest yearning 
To their unnatui-al mother turning. 
No traitors they ! but tried and leal, 
Whose own is but thy general weal, 
Still blending with the patriot's zeal 
The Christian's love for human kind. 
To caste and climate uuconfuied. 

A holy gathering ! peaceful all : 
No threat of war, no savage call 

For vengeance on an erring brother ! 
But in their stead the godlike plan 
To teach the brotherhood of man 

To love and reverence one another, 
As sharers of a common blood, 
The children of a common God ! 
Yet, even at its lightest word, 
Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred : 
Spain, watching from her Moro's keep 
Her slave-ships traversing the deep. 
And Rio, in her strength and pride, 
Lifting, along her mountain -side. 
Her snowy battlements and towers, 
Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers, 
With bitter hate and sullen fear 
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear ; 
And where my country's flag is flowing, 
On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing. 

Above the Nation's council halls. 
Where Freedom's praise is loud and long. 

While close beneath the outward walls 
The driver plies his reeking thong ; 

Tke hammer of the man-thief falls. 
O'er hypocritic cheek and brow 
The crimson flush of shame shall glow : 
And all who for their native land 
Are pledging life and heart and hand. 
Worn watchers o'er her changing weal. 
Who for her tarnished honor feel. 
Through cottage door and council-hall 
Shall thunder an awakening call. 
The pen along its page shall burn 
With all intolerable scorn ; 
An eloquent rebuke shall go 
On all the winds that Southward blow ; 
From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb. 
Warning and dread appeal shall come, 
Like those which Israel heard from him, 
The Prophet of the Cherubim ; 
Or those which sad Esaias hurled 
Against a sin-accursed world ! 
Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling 
Unceasing from its iron wing, 
With characters inscribed thereon. 

As fearful in the despot's hall 



As to the pomp of Babylon 

The fire-sign on the palace wall ! 

And, from her dark iniquities, 
Methinks I see my country rise : 
Not challenging the nations round 

To note her tardy justice done ; 
Her captives from their chains unbound, 

Her prisons opening to the sun : 
But tearfully her arms extending 
Over the poor and unoffending ; 

Her regal emblem now no longer 
A bird of prey, with talons reeking, 
Above the dying captive shrieking. 
But, spreading out her ample wing, 
A broad, impartial covering. 

The weaker sheltered by the stronger ! 
Oh, then to Faith's anointed eyes 

The promised token shall be given ; 
And on a nation's sacrifice, 
Atoning for the sin of years, 
And wet with penitential tears, 

The fire shall fall from Heaven ! 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA 

Written on reading an account of the pro- 
ceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in 
reference to George Latimer, the alleged fugi- 
tive slave, who was seized in Boston without 
warrant at the request of James B. Grey, of 
Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case 
caused great excitement North and South, and 
led to the presentation of a petition to Con- 
gress, signed by more than fifty thousand cit- 
izens of Massachusetts, calling for such laws 
and proposed amendments to the Constitution 
as should relieve the Commonwealth from all 
further participation in the crime of oppression. 
George Latimer himself was finally given free 
papers for the sum of four hundred dollars. 

The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, 
upon its Southern way. 

Bears greeting to Virginia from Massa- 
chusetts Bay : 

No word of haughty challenging, nor battle 
bugle's peal, 

Nor steady tread of marching files, nor 
clang of horsemen's steel. 

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along 

our highways go ; 
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies 

the snow ; 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA 



287 



Aud to the land-breeze of our ports, upon 

their errands far, 
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but 

none are spread for war. 

We hear thy threats, Virginia ! thy stormy 

words and liigh 
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which 

melt along our sky ; 
Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes its 

honest labor here, 
No hewer of our mouutam oaks suspends 

his axe in fear. 

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs 
along St. George's bank ; 

Cold on the shores of Labrador the fog 
lies white and dank ; 

Through storm, and wave, and blinding 
mist, stout are the hearts which man 

The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea- 
boats of Cape Ann. 

The cold north light and wintry sun glare 

on their icy forms, 
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or 

wrestling with the storms ; 
Free as the winds they drive before, rough 

as the waves they roam, 
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat 

against their rocky home. 

W^hat means the Old Dominion ? Hath 

she forgot the day 
When o'er her conquered valleys swept 

the Briton's steel array ? 
How side by side, with sons of hers, the 

Massachusetts men 
Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and 

stout Cornwallis, then ? 

Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer 

to the call 
Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out 

from Faneuil Hall ? 
When, echoing hack her Henry's cry, 

came pulsing on each breath 
Of Northern winds the thrilling sounds of 

" Liberty or Death ! " 

What asks the Old Dominion? If now 

her sons have proved 
False to their fathers' memory, false to the 

faith they loved ; 



If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great 

charter spurn. 
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and 

duty turn ? 

We hunt your bondmen, flying from Sla- 
very's hateful hell ; 

Our voices, at your bidding, take up the 
bloodhound's yell ; 

We gather, at your summons, above our 
fathers' graves, 

From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear 
your wretched slaves ! 

Thank God ! not yet so vilely can Massa- 
chusetts bow ; 

The spirit of her early time is with her even 
now ; 

Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves 
slow and calm and cool. 

She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sis- 
ter's slave and tool ! 

All that a sister State should do, all that a 
free State may. 

Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our 
eai'Iy day ; 

But that one dark loathsome burden ye must 
stagger with alone. 

And reap the bitter harvest which ye your- 
selves have sown ! 

Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, 

and burden God's free air 
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and 

manhood's wild despair ; 
Cling closer to the " cleaving curse " that 

writes upon your plains 
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a 

laud of chains. 

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cava- 
liers of old. 

By watching round the shambles where hu- 
man flesh is sold ; 

Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count 
his market value, when 

The maddened mother's cry of woe shall 
pierce the slaver's den ! 

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the 

Virginia name ; 
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with 

rankest weeds of shame ; 



288 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair uni- 
verse ; 

We wash our hands forever of your sin and 
shame and curse. 

A voice from lips whereon the coal from 
Freedom's shrine hath been, 

Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of 
Berkshire's mountain men : 

The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly 
lingering still 

In all our sunny valleys, on every wind- 
swept hill. 

And when the prowling man-thief came 

hunting for his prey 
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft 

of gray. 
How, through the free lips of the son, the 

father's warning spoke : 
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the 

Pilgrim city broke ! 

A hundred thousand right arms were lifted 

up on high, 
A hvmdred thousand voices sent back their 

loud reply ; 
Through the thronged towns of Essex the 

startling summons rang. 
And up from bench and loom and wheel her 

young mechanics sprang ! 

The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thou- 
sands as of one. 

The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lex- 
ington ; 

From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Ply- 
mouth's rocky bound 

To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean 
close her round ; 

From rich and rural Worcester, where 

through the calm repose 
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the 

gentle Nashua flows. 
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the 

mountain larches stir, 
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of 

" God save Latimer ! " 

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the 

salt sea spray ; 
And Bristol sent her answering shout down 

Narragansett Bay I 



Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden 

felt the thrill. 
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen 

swept down from Holyoke Hill. 

The voice of Massachusetts ! Of her free 
sons and daughters, 

Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of 
many waters ! 

Against the burden of that voice what ty- 
rant power shall stand ? 

No fetters in the Bay State 1 No slave 
upon her land ! 

Look to it well, Virginians ! In calmness 

we have borne, 
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult 

and your scorn ; 
You 've spurned our kindest counsels ; 

you 've hunted for our lives ; 
And shaken round our hearths and homes 

your manacles and gyves ! 

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling 

no torch within 
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath 

your soil of sin ; 
We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, 

while ye can. 
With the strong upward tendencies and 

godlike soul of man ! 

But for us and for our children, the vow 

which we have given 
For freedom and humanity is registered in 

heaven ; 
No slave-hunt in our borders, — no pirate 

on our strand ! 
No fetters in the Bay State, — no slave 

upon our land ! 



THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE 

In a publication of L. F. Tasistro — Bandom 
Shots and Southern Breezes — is a description of 
a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the 
auctioneer recommended the woman on the 
stand as " A good Christian ! " It was not 
uncommon to see advertisements of slaves for 
sale, in which they were described as pious oi 
as members of the church. In one advertise- 
ment a slave was noted as " a Baptist preacher." 



THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN 



A Christian ! going, gone ! 
Who bids for God's own image ? for his 

grace, 
Which tliat poor victim of the market-place, 

Hath in her suffering won ? 

My God ! can such things be ? 
Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done 
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one 

Is even done to Thee ? 

In that sad victim, then, 
Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand ; 
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band, 

Bound, sold, and scourged again ! 

A Christian up for sale ! 
Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask 

her frame. 
Make her life loathsome with your wrong 
and shame. 
Her patience shall not fail ! 

A heathen hand might deal 
Back on your heads the gathered wrong of 

years : 
But her low, broken prayer and nightly 
tears. 
Ye neither heed nor feel. 

Con well thy lesson o'er. 
Thou prudent teacher, tell ihe toiling slave 
No dangerous tale of Him who came to save 

The outcast and the poor. 

But wisely shut the ray 
Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart, 
And to her darkened mind alone impart 

One stern command. Obey ! 

So shalt thou deftly raise 
The market price of human flesh ; and while 
On thee, their pampered guest, the planters 
smile. 

Thy church shall praise. 

Grave, reverend men shall tell 
From Northern pulpits how thy work was 

blest, 
While in that vile South Sodom first and 
best, 
Thy poor disciples sell. 

Oh, shame ! the Moslem thrall, 
Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels. 



While turning to the sacred Kebla feels 
His fetters break and fall. 

Cheers for the turbaned Bey 
Of robber-peopled Tunis ! he hath torn 
The dark slave - dungeons open, and hath 
borne 

Their inmates into day : 

But our poor slave in vain 
Turns to the Christian shrine his aching 

eyes ; 
Its rites will only swell his market price, 

And rivet on his chain. 

God of all right ! how long 
Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand. 
Lifting in prayer to Thee the bloody hand 

And haughty brow of wrong ? 

Oh, from the fields of cane, 
From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's 

cell; 
From the black slave-ship's foul and loath- 
some hell. 
And coffle's weary chain ; 

Hoarse, horrible, and strong, 
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry. 
Filling the arches of the hollow sky. 

How long, O God, how long ? 



THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. 
BROWN 

John L. Brown, a young white man of South 
Carolina, was in 1844 sentenced to death for 
aiding a young slave woman, whom he loved 
and had married, to escape from slavery. In 
pronouncing the sentence Judge O'Neale ad- 
dressed to the prisoner words of appalling blas- 
phemy [of which the following passages give 
some notion] : — 

You are to die ! . . . Of your past life I know no- 
thing, excppt what your trial furnished. That told me 
that the crime for which you are to suffer was the con- 
sequence of a want of attention on your part to the 
duties of life. The strange woman snared you. She 
flattered you with her words, and you became her vic- 
tim. The consequence was, that, led on by a desire to 
serve her, you committed the offence of aiding a slave 
to run away and depart from her master's service ; and 
now, for it you are to die ! . . . 

You are young; quite too young to be where you 
are. If you had remembered your Creator in your past 
days, you would not now be in a felon's place, to re- 
ceive a felon's judgment. Still, it is not too late to 
remember your Creator. He calls early, and He callB 



290 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



lats. He stretches out the arms of a Father's love to 
you — to the vilest sinner — and says : " Come unto me 
and be saved." 

No event in the history of the anti-slavery 
struggle so stirred the two hemispheres as did 
this dreadful sentence. A cry of horror was 
heard from Europe. In the British House of 
Lords Brougham and Dennian spoke of it with 
mingled pathos and indignation. Thirteen 
hundred clergymen and church officers iu 
Great Britain addressed a memorial to the 
churches of South Carolina against the atrocity. 
Indeed, so strong was the pressure of the sen- 
timent of abhorrence and disgust that South 
Carolina yielded to it, and the sentence was 
commuted to scourging and banishment. 

Ho ! thou who seekest late and long 

A License from the Holy Book 
For brutal lust and fieudish wrong, 

Man of the Pulpit, look ! 
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes, 

This ripe fruit of thy teaching see ; 
And tell us liow to heaven will rise 
The incense of this sacrifice — 

This blossom of the gallows tree ! 

Search out for slavery's hour of need 

' Some fitting text of sacred writ ; 
Give heaven the credit of a deed 

Which shames the nether pit. 
Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him 

Whose truth is on thy lips a lie ; 
Ask that His bright winged cherubim 
May bend around that scaffold grim 

To guard and bless and sanctify. 

O champion of the people's cause ! 

Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke 
Of foreign wrong and Old World's laws, 

Man of the Senate, look ! 
Was this the promise of the free, 

The great hope of our early time, 
That slavery's poison vine should be 
Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed tree 

O'erclustered with such fruits of crime ? 

Send out the summons East and West, 

And South and North, let all be there 
Where he who pitied the oppressed 

Svvings out in sun and air. 
Let not a Democratic hand 

The grisly hangman's task refuse ; 
There let each loyal patriot stand. 
Awaiting slavery's command. 

To twist the rope and draw the noose I 



But vain is irony — unmeet 

Its cold rebuke for deeds which start 
In fiery and indignant beat 

The pulses of the heart. 
Leave studied wit and guarded phrase 

For those who think but do not feel ; 
Let men speak out in words which raise 
Where'er they fall, an answering blaze 

Like flints which strike the fire from steeL 

Still let a mousing priesthood ply 

Their garbled text and gloss of sin, 
And make the lettered scroll deny 

Its living soul within : 
Still let the place-fed, titled knave 

Plead robbery's right with purchased lips, 
And tell us that our fathers gave 
For Freedom's pedestal, a slave. 

The frieze and moulding, chains and 
whips ! 

But ye who own that Higher Law 

Whose tablets in the heart are set, 
Speak out in words of power and awe 

That God is living yet ! 
Breathe forth once more those tones sublime 

Which thrilled the burdened prophet's 
lyre. 
And in a dark and evil time 
Smote down on Israel's fast of crime 

And gift of blood, a rain of fire ! 

Oh, not for us the graceful lay 

To whose soft measures lightly move 
The footsteps of the faun and fay, 

O'er-locked by mirth and love ! 
But such a stern and startling strain 

As Britain's hunted bards Hung down 
From Snowdeu to the conquered plain. 
Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain 

On trampled field and smoking town. 

By Liberty's dishonored name, 

By man's lost hope and failing trust. 
By words and deeds which bow with shame 

Our foreheads to the dust. 
By the exulting strangers' sneer, 

Borne to us from the Old World's 
thrones. 
And by their victims' grief who hear. 
In sunless mines and dungeons drear, 

How Freedom's land her faith disowns I 

Speak out in acts. The time for words 
Has passed, and deeds suffice alone ; 



TEXAS 



29] 



In vain against the clang of swords 

Tlie wailing pipe is blown ! 
Act, act in God's name, while ye may ! 

Smite from the chnrch her leprous limb ! 
Throw open to the light of day 
The bondman's cell, and break away 

The chains the state has bound on him ! 

Ho ! every trne and living soul, 

To Freedom's perilled altar bear 
The Freeman's and the Christian's whole 

Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer ! 
One last, great battle for the right — 

One short, sharp struggle to be free ! 
To do is to succeed — our fight _ 
Is waged in Heaven's approving sight ; 

The smile of God is Victory. 



TEXAS 

VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND 

The five poems immediately following indi- 
cate the intense feeling of tlie friends of free- 
dom in view of the annexation of Texas, with 
its vast territory sufficient, as was boasted, for 
six new slave States. [The first poem seems 
to have been written at the earnest entreaty 
of Lowell, who called on Whittier " to cry 
aloud and spare not against the accursed Texas 
plot."] 

Up the hillside, down the glen, 
Rouse the sleeping citizen; 
Summon out the might of men ! 

Like a lion growling low, 
Like a night-storm rising slow, 
Like the tread of unseen foe ; 

It is coming, it is nigh ! 

Stand your homes and altars by; 

On your own free thresholds die. 

Clang the bells in all your spires ; 
On the gray hills of your sires 
Fling to heaven your signal-fires. 

From Wachuset, lone and bleak, 

Unto Berkshire's tallest peak. 

Let the flame-tongued heralds speak. 

Oh, for God and duty stand. 
Heart to heart and hard to hand, 
Round the old graves of the land. 



Whoso shrinks or falters now. 
Whoso to the yoke would bow, 
Brand the craven on his brow ! 

Freedom's soil bath only place 
For a free and fearless race. 
None for traitors false and base. 

Perish party, perish clan ; 
Strike together while ye can, 
Like the arm of one strong man. 

Like that angel's voice sublime, 
Heard above a world of crime, 
Crying of the end of time ; 

With one heart and with one mouth. 
Let the North unto the South 
Speak the word befitting both : 

" What though Issachar be strong ! 
Ye may load his back with wrong 
Overmuch and over long : 

" Patience with her cup o'errun. 
With her weary thread outspun. 
Murmurs that her work is done. 

" Make our Union-bond a chain. 
Weak as tow in Freedom's strain 
Link by link shall snap in twain. 

" Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope 
Bind the starry cluster up. 
Shattered over heaven's blue cope ! 

" Give us bright though broken rays. 
Rather than eternal haze. 
Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze. 

" Take your land of sun and bloom ; 
Only leave to Freedom room 
For her plough, and forge, and loom ; 

" Take your slavery-blackened vales ; 
Leave us but our own free gales. 
Blowing on our thousand sails. 

" Boldly, or with treacherous art. 
Strike the blood-wrought chain apart 
Break the Union's mighty heart ; 

" Work the ruin, if ye will ; 
Pluck upon your heads an ill 
Which shall grow and deepen still. 



292 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



" With your bondman's right arm bare, 
With his heart of black despair, 
Stand alone, if stand ye dare J 

" Onward with your fell design ; 
Dig the gulf and draw the line : 
Fire beneath your feet the mine : 

" Deeply, when the wide abyss 
Yawns between your land and this, 
Shall ye feel your helplessness. 

" By the hearth, and in the bed, 
Shaken by a look or tread. 
Ye shall own a guilty dread. 

" And the curse of unpaid toil. 
Downward through your generous soil 
Like a fire shall burn and spoil. 

•' Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, 
Vines our rocks shall overgrow, 
Plenty in our valleys flow ; — 

" And when vengeance clouds your skies, 
, Hither shall ye turn your eyes, 
As the lost on Paradise ! 

" We but ask our rocky strand. 
Freedom's true and brother band. 
Freedom's strong and honest hand ; 

"Valleys by the slave untrod, 
And the Pilgrim's mountain sod. 
Blessed of our fathers' God ! " 



TO FANEUIL HALL 

Written in 1844, on reading a call by " a 
Massachusetts Freeman" for a meeting in 
Faneuil Hall of the citizens of Massachusetts, 
without distinction of party, opposed to the an- 
nexation of Texas and the aggressions of South 
Carolina, and in favor of decisive action against 
slavery. 

Men f if manhood still ye claim, 

If the Northern pulse can thrill. 
Roused by wrong or stung by shame, 

Freely, strongly still ; 
Let the sotmds of traffic die -• 

Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall, 
Fling the axe and hammer by ; 

Throng to Faneuil Hall I 



Wrongs which freemen never brooked. 

Dangers grim and fierce as they. 
Which, like couching lions, looked 

On your fathers' way ; 
Tliese your instant zeal demand, 

Shaking witli their earthquake-call 
Every rood of Pilgrim land, 

Ho, to Faneuil Hall ! 

From your capes and sandy bars, 

From your mountain-ridges cold. 
Through whose pines the westering stars 

Stoop their crowns of gold ; 
Come, and with your footsteps wake 

Echoes from that holy wall ; 
Once again, for Freedom's sake, 

Rock your fathers' hall ! 

Up, and tread beneath your feet 

Every cord by party spun : 
Let your hearts together beat 

As the heart of one. 
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade, 

Let them rise or let them fall : 
Freedom asks your common aid, — 

Up, to Faneuil Hall ! 

Up, and let each voice that speaks 

Ring from thence to Southern plains, 
Sharply as the blow which breaks 

Prison-bolts and chains ! 
Speak as well becomes the free : 

Dreaded more than steel or ball, 
Shall your calmest utterance be, 

Heard from Faneuil Hall ! 

Have they wronged us ? Let us then 

Render back nor threats nor prayers ; 
Have they chained our free-born men ? 

Let us unchain theirs ! 
Up, your banner leads the van. 

Blazoned, " Liberty for all ! " 
Finish what your sires began ! 

Up, to Faneuil Hall ! 



TO MASSACHUSETTS 

What though around thee blazes 

No fiery rallying sign ? 
From all thy own high places. 

Give heaven the light of thine ! 
What though unthrilled, unmoving, 

The statesman stand apart, 



THE PIN&-TREE 



293 



And comes no warm approving 
From Mammou's crowded mart ? 

Still let the land be shaken 

By a summons of thine own ! 
By all save truth forsaken, 

Stand fast with that alone ! 
Shrink not from strife unequal ! 

With the best is always hope ; 
And ever in the sequel 

God holds the right side up ! 

But when, with thine uniting, 

Come voices long and loud, 
And far-oi¥ hills are writing 

Thy fire-words on the cloud ; 
When from Penobscot's fountains 

A deep response is heard, 
And across the Western mountains 

Rolls back thy rallying word ; 

Shall thy line of battle falter, 

With its allies just in view ? 
Oh, by hearth and holy altar, 

My fatherland, be true ! 
Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom ! 

Speed them onward far and fast ! 
Over hill and valley speed them. 

Like the sibyl's on the blast ! 

Lo ! the Empire State is shaking 

The shackles from her hand ; 
With the rugged North is waking 

The level sunset land ! 
On they come, the free battalions ! 

East and West and North they come, 
And the heart-beat of tiie millions 

Is the beat of Freedom's drum. 

" To the tyrant's plot no favor ! 

No heed to place-fed knaves ! 
Bar and bolt the door forever 

Against the land of slaves ! " 
Hear it, mother P^arth, and hear it. 

The heavens above us spread ! 
The land is roused, — its spirit 

Was sleeping, but not dead I 



NEW HAMPSHIRE 

God bless New Hampshire ! from her 

granite peaks 
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon 

speaks. 



The long-bound vassal of the exulting 
South 
For very shame her self-forged chain 
has broken ; 

Torn the black seal of slavery from her 
mouth. 
And in the clear tones of her old time 
spoken ! 

Oh, all Tmdreanied - of, all unhoped-for 
changes ! 
The tyrant's ally proves his sternest foe ; 

To all his biddings, from her mountain 
ranges. 
New Hampshire thunders an indignant 
No! 

Who is it now despairs ? Oh, faint of 
heart. 
Look upward to those Northern moun- 
tains cold. 
Flouted by Freedom's victor -flag un- 
rolled. 

And gather strength to bear a manlier 
part ! 

All is not lost. The angel of God's bless- 
ing 
Encamps with Freedom on the field of 
fight ; 

Still to her banner, day by day, are press- 
ing 

. Unlocked - for allies, striking for the 
right ! 

Courage, then, Northern hearts ! Be firm, 
be true : 

What one brave State hath done, can ye not 
also do ? 



THE PINE-TREE 

Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Re- 
solves of Stephen C. Phillips had been rejected 
by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 
1846. 

Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay 

State's rusted shield, 
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on 

our banner's tattered field. 
Sons of men who sat in council with their 

Bibles round the board, 
Answering England's royal missive with a 

firm, " Thus saith the Lord ! " 
Rise again for home and freedom ! set the 

battle in array ! 
What the fathers did of old time we their 

sons must do to-day. 



294 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your 

paltry pedler cries ; 
Shall the good State sink her honor that 

your gambling stocks may rise ? 
Would ye barter man for cotton ? That 

your gains may sum up higher, 
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our 

children through the fire ? 
Is the dollar only real ? God and truth 

and right a dream ? 
W^eighed against your lying ledgers must 

our manliood kick the beam ? 

O my God ! for that free spirit, which of 

old in Boston town 
Smote the Province House with terror, 

struck the crest of Andros down ! 
For another strong-voiced Adams in the 

city's streets to cry, 
" Up for God and Massachusetts ! Set 

your feet on Mammon's lie ! 
Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your 

cotton's latest pound, 
But in Heaven's name keep your honor, 

keep the heart o' the Bay State 

sound ! " 

Where 's the man for Massachusetts ? 

Where 's the voice to speak her free ? 
Where 's the hand to light up bonfires from 

her mountains to the sea ? 
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer ? Sits 

she dumb in her despair ? 
Has she none to break the silence ? Has 

she none to do and dare ? 
O my God ! for one right worthy to lift up 

her rusted shield, 
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her 

banner's tattered field ! 



TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN 

John C. Calhoun, who had strongly uro'ed 
the extension of slave territory by the annexa- 
tion of Texas, even if it should involve a war 
with Eng-land, was unwilling' to promote the 
acquisition of Oreg-on, which would enlarg^e 
the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded 
as an excuse the peril of foreign complications 
which he had defied when the interests of sla- 
very were involved. 

Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear 
Wail in the wind ? And dost thou shake 
to hear, 



Actseon-like, the bay of thine own hounds, 
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their 

bounds ? 
Sore - baffled statesman ! when thy eager 

hand. 
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry 

pack. 
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land, 
Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling 

back, 
These dogs of thine might snuff on Sla- 
very's track ? 
Where 's now the boast, which even thy 

guarded tongue. 
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the 

Senate flung. 
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan. 
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man ? 
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Free- 
dom planting, 
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar. 
Whence all could see, through the south 

windows slanting. 
Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone 

Star ! 
The Fates are just ; they give us but our 

own ; 
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown. 
There is an Eastern story, not unknown, 
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic 

skUl 
Called demons up his water-jars to fill ; 
Deftly and silently, they did his will, 
But, when the task was done, kept pouring 

still. 
In vain with spell and charm the wizard 

wrought. 
Faster and faster were the buckets brought. 
Higher and higher rose the flood around, 
Till the fiends clapped their hands above 

their master drowned ! 
So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee. 
For God still overrules man's schemes, and 

takes 
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes 
The wrath of man to praise Him. It may 

be, 
Tliat the roused spirits of Democracy 
May leave to freer States the same wide 

door 
Through which thy slave-cursed Texas en- 
tered in, 
From out the blood and fire, the wrong and 

sin. 
Of the stormed city and the ghastly plain, 



AT WASHINGTON 



'■9S 



Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain, 
The myriad-handed pioneer may pour, 
And the wild West with the roused North 

combine 
And heave the engineer of evil with his 



AT WASHINGTON 

Suggested by a visit to the city of Washing- 
ton, in the 12th month of 1845. [Originally en- 
titled Lines-] 

With a cold and wintry noon-light 

On its roofs and steeples shed. 

Shadows weaving with the sunlight 

From the gray sky overhead. 

Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the 

half-built to^vn outspread. 

Through this broad street, restless ever, 

Ebbs and flows a human tide, 
Wave on wave a living river ; 
Wealth and fashion side by side ; 
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same 
quick current glide. 

Underneath yon dome, whose coping 
Springs above them, vast and tall. 
Grave men in the dust are groping 
For the largess, base and small, 
W^hich the hand of Power is scattering, 
crumbs which from its table fall. 

Base of heart ! They vilely barter 
Honor's wealth for party's place ; 
Step by step on Freedom's charter 
Leaving footprints of disgrace ; 
For to-day's poor pittance turning from the 
great hope of their race. 

Yet, where festal lamps are throwing 

Glory round the dancer's hair, 
Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing 
Backward on the sunset air ; 
And the low quick pulse of music beats its 
measure sweet and rare : 

There to-night shall woman's glances, 

Star-like, welcome give to them ; 
Fawning fools with shy advances 
Seek to touch their garments' hem. 
With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds 
which God and Truth condemn. 



From tliis glittering lie my vision 
Takes a broader, sadder range, 
Full before me have arisen 

Other pictures dark and strange ; 
From the parlor to the prison must the 
scene and witness change. 

Hark ! the heavy gate is swinging 

On its hinges, harsh and slow ; 
One pale prison lamp is flinging 
On a fearful group below 
Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe'er 
it does not show. 

Pitying God ! Is that a woman 

On whose wrist the shackles clash ? 
Is that shriek she utters human, 
Underneath the stinging lash ? 
Are they men whose eyes of madness from 
that sad procession flash ? 

Still the dance goes gajdy onward ! 
What is it to Wealth and Pride 
That without the stars are looking 
On a scene which earth should hide ? 
That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking 
on Potomac's tide ! 

Vainly to that mean Ambition 

Which, upon a rival's fall. 
Winds above its old condition, 
With a reptile's slimy crawl. 
Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the 
slave in anguish call. 

Vainly to the child of Fashion, 

Giving to ideal woe 
Graceful luxury of compassion, 
Shall the stricken mourner go ; 
Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful 
the hollow show ! 

Nay, my words are all too sweeping : 

In this crowded human mart. 
Feeling is not dead, but sleeping ; 
Man's strong will and woman's heart, 
In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall 
bear their generous part. 

And from yonder sunny ^'alleys. 
Southward in the distance lost. 
Freedom yet shall summon allies 
Worthier than the North can boast, 
With the Evil by their hearth-stones grap- 
pling at severer cost. 



296 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Now, the soul aloue is willing : 

Faiut the heart and weak the knee ; 
And as yet no lip is tlu-illing 

With the mighty words, " Be Free ! " 
Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, but 
his advent is to be ! 

Meanwhile, turning from the revel 

To the prison-cell my sight, 
For iuteuser hate of evil, 
For a keener sense of right, 
Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of 
the Slaves, to-night ! 

" To thy duty now and ever ! 

Dream no more of rest or stay : 
Give to Freedom's great endeavor 
All thou art and hast to-day : " 
Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a 
Voice, or seems to say. 

Ye with heart and vision gifted 
To discern and love the right. 
Whose worn faces have been lifted 
To the slowly-growing light, 
Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted 
slowly back the murk of night ! 

Ye who through long years of trial 
Still have held your purpose fast. 
While a lengthening shade the dial 
From the westering sunshine cast. 
And of hope each hour's denial seemed an 
echo of the last ! 

O my brothers ! O my sisters ! 

Would to God that ye were near, 
Gazing with me down the vistas 
Of a sorrow strange and drear ; 
Would to God that ye were listeners to the 
Voice I seem to hear ! 

With the storm above us driving, 

With the false earth mined below, 
Who shall marvel if thus striving 
We have counted friend as foe ; 
Unto one another giving in the darkiiess 
blow for blow. 

Well it may be that our natures 

Have grown sterner and more hard. 
And the freshness of their features 
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred, 
And their harmonies of feeling overtasked 
and rudely jarred. 



Be it so. It should not swerve us 

From a purpose true and brave ; 
Dearer Freedom's rugged service 
Than the pastime of the slave ; 
Better is the storm above it than the quiet 
of the grave. 

Let us then, uniting, bury 

All our idle feuds in dust, 
And to future conflicts caj'ry 

Mutual faith and common trust ; 
Always he who most forgiveth in his brother 
is most just. 

From the eternal shadow rounding 

All our sun and starlight here, 
Voices of our lost ones sounding 
Bid us be of heart and cheer, 
Through the silence, down the spaces, fall- 
ing on the inward ear. 

Know we not our dead are looking 

Downward with a sad surprise, 
All our strife of words rebuking 
With their mild and loving eyes ? 
Shall we grieve the holy angels ? Shall we 
cloud their blessed skies ? 

Let us draw their mantles o'er us 
Which have fallen in our way ; 
Let us do the work before us, 
Cheerly, bravely, while we may, 
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and 
with us it is not day ! 



THE BRANDED HAND 

Captain Jonathan Walker, of Harwich, 
Mass., was solicited by several fugitive slaves 
at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them in his 
vessel to the British West Indies. Although 
well aware of the great hazard of the enter- 
prise he attempted to comply with the request, 
but was seized at sea by an American vessel, 
consigned to the authorities at Key West, and 
thence sent back to Pensacola, where, after 
a long and rigorous confinement in prison, he 
was tried and sentenced to be branded on hia 
right hand with the letters " S. S." (slave- 
stealer) and amerced in a heavy fine. 

Welcome home again, brave seaman ! 

with thy thoughtful brow and gray, 
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, 

better day ; 



THE BRANDED HAND 



297 



With that front of calm endurance, on 
whose steady nerve in vain 

Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the 
fiery shafts of pain ! 

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee ? Did the 
brutal cravens aim 

To make God's truth thy falsehood, His 
holiest work thy shame ? 

When, all blood-quenched, from the tor- 
ture the iron was withdrawn. 

How laughed their evil angel the baffled 
fools to scorn ! 

They change to wrong the dixty which God 

hath written out 
On the great heart of humanity, too legible 

for doubt ! 
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched 

from footsole up to crown. 
Give to shame wliat God hath given unto 

honor and renown ! 

Why, that brand is highest honor ! than 

its traces never yet 
Upon old armorial hatchments was a 

prouder blazon set ; 
And thy unborn generations, as they tread 

our rocky strand. 
Shall tell with pride the story of their 

father's branded hand ! 

As the Templar home was welcome, bear- 
ing back from Syrian wars 

The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim 
scimitars, 

The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's 
crimson span. 

So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest 
friend of God and man. 

He suffered for the ransom of the dear 
Redeemer's grave. 

Thou for His living presence in the bound 
and bleeding slave ; 

He for a soil no longer by the feet of an- 
gels trod. 

Thou for the true Shechinah, the present 
home of God ! 

For, while the jurist, sitting with the 
slave-whip o'er him swung. 

From the tortured truths of freedom the 
lie of slavery wrmig, 



And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each 

God-deserted shrine, 
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, poured 

the bondman's blood for wine ; 

While the multitude in blindness to a far- 
off Saviour knelt. 

And spurned, the while, the temple where 
a present Saviour dwelt ; 

Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, in the 
prison shadows dim. 

And thy mercy to the bondman, it was 
mercy unto Him ! 

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky 

above and wave below. 
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the 

babbling schoolmen know ; 
God's stars and silence taught thee, as His 

angels only can. 
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the 

cope of heaven is Man ! 

That he who treads profanely on the scrolls 

of law and creed, 
In the depth of God's great goodness may 

find mercy in his need ; 
But woe to him who crushes the soul with 

chain and rod. 
And herds with lower natures the awful 

form of God ! 

Then lift that manly right-hand, bold 

ploughman of the wave ! 
Its branded palm shall prophesy, " Salvation 

to the Slave ! " 
Hold up its fire -wrought language, that 

whoso reads may feel 
His heart swell strong within him, his 

sinews change to steel. 

Hold it up before our sunshine, up against 

our Northern air ; 
Ho ! men of Massachusetts, for the love of 

God, look there ! 
Take it henceforth for your standard, like 

the Bruce's heart of yore, 
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that 

hand be seen before ! 

And the masters of the slave-land shall 

tremble at that sign. 
When it points its finger Southward along 

the Puritan line : 



298 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Can the craft of State avail them ! Cau a 
Christless church withstand, 

In the van of Freedom's onset, the coming 
of that hand ? 



THE FREED ISLANDS 

Written for the anniversary celebration of 
the first of August, at Milton, 1846. [Origi- 
nally entitled Lines.] 

A FEW brief years have passed away 

Since Britain drove her million slaves 
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray : 
God willed their freedom ; and to-day 
Life blooms above those island graves ! 

He spoke ! across the Carib Sea, 

We heard the clash of breaking chains, 

And felt the heart-throb of the free, 

The first strong pulse of liberty 

Which thrilled along the bondman's veins. 

Though long delayed, and far, and slow, 

The Briton's triumph shall be ours : 
Wears slavery here a prouder brow 
Than that which twelve short years ago 
Scowled darkly from her island bow- 
ers ? 

Mighty alike for good or ill 

With Mother-land, we fully share 

The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel, 

The tireless energy of will, 

The power to do, the pride to dare. 

What she has done can we not do ? 

Our hour and men are both at hand ; 
The blast which Freedom's angel blew 
O'er her green islands, echoes through 

Each valley of our forest land. 

Hear it, old Europe ! we have sworn 

The death of slavery. When it falls, 
Look to your vassals in their turn, 
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn, 
Your prisons and your palace walls ! 

kingly mockers ! scoffing show 

What deeds in Freedom's name we do ; 
Yet know that every taunt ye throw 
Across the waters, goads our slow 

Progression towards the right and true. 



Not always shall your outraged poor, 
Appalled by democratic crime. 

Grind as their fathers ground before ; 

Tiie hour which sees our prison door 
Swing wide shall be their triumph time. 

On then, my brothers ! every blow 

Ye deal is felt the wide earth through ; 
Whatever here uplifts the low 
Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe. 

Blesses the Old World through the New. 

Take heart ! The promised hour draws 
near ; 

I hear the downward beat of wings, 
And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear : 
" Joy to the people ! woe and fear 

To new-world tyrants, old-world kings ! " 



A LETTER </ 

Supposed to be written by the chairman of 
the '■ Central Clique " at Concord, N. H., to 
the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington, giving the 
result of the election. 

The following verses were piiblished in the 
Boston Chronotype in 184G. They refer to the 
contest in New Hampshire, which resulted in 
the defeat of the pro-slavery Democracy, and 
in the election of John P. Hale to the United 
States Senate. Although their authorship was 
not acknowledged, it was strongly suspected. 
They furnish a specimen of the way, on the 
whole rather good-natured, in which the lib- 
erty-lovers of half a century ago answered the 
social and political outlawry and mob violence 
to which they were subjected. 

'T IS over, Moses ! All is lost ! 

I hear the bells a-ringiug ; 
Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host 

I hear the Free-Wills singing. 
We 're routed, Moses, horse and foot, 

If there be truth in figures. 
With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit. 

And Hale, and all the " niggers." 

Alack ! alas ! this month or more 

We 've felt a sad foreboding ; 
Our very dreams the burden bore 

Of central cliques exploding ; 
Before our eyes a furnace shone. 

Where heads of dough were roasting, 
And one we took to be your own 

The traitor Hale was toasting I 



A LETTER 



299 



Our Belknap brother heard with awe 

The Congo minstrels playing ; 
At Pittslicld Reuben Leavitt saw 

The ghost of Storrs a-prayiug ; 
And Carroll's woods were sad to see, 

With black-winged crows a-darting ; 
And Black Snout looked on Ossipee, 

New-glossed with Day and Martin. 

We thought the " Old Man of the Notch " 

His face seemed changing wholly — 
His lips seemed thick ; his nose seemed flat ; 

His misty hair looked woolly ; 
And Coos teamsters, shrieking, tied 

From the metamorphosed figure. 
" Look there ! " they said, " the Old Stone 
Head 

Himself is turnmg nigger ! " 

The schoolhouse, out of Canaan hauled, 

Seemed turning on its track again, 
Ajid like a great swamp-turtle crawled 

To Canaan village back again, 
Shook off the mud and settled flat 

Upon its underpinning ; 
A nigger on its ridge-pole sat, 

From ear to ear a-grinniug. 

Gray H d heard o' nights the sound 

Of rail-cars onward faring ; 
Right over Democratic ground 

The iron horse came tearing. 
A flag waved o'er that spectral train, 

As high as Pittsfield steeple ; 
Its emblem was a broken chain, 

Its motto : " To the people ! " 

I dreamed that Charley took his bed. 

With Hale for his physician ; 
His daily dose an old " unread 

And unreferred " petition. 
There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat. 

As near as near could be, man ; 
They leeched him with the " Democrat ; " 

They blistered with the " Freeman." 

Ah ! grisly portents ! \Miat avail 

Your terrors of forewarning ? 
We wake to find the nightmare Hale 

Astride our breasts at morning ! 
From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream 

Our foes their throats are trying ; 
The very factory-spindles seem 

To mock us while they 're flying. 



The hills have bonfires ; in our streets 

Flags llout us in our faces ; 
The newsboys, peddling off their sheets, 

Are hoarse with our disgraces. 
In vain we turn, for gibing wit 

And shoutings follow after. 
As if old Kearsarge had split 

His granite sides with laughter ! 

What boots it that we pelted out 

The anti-slavery women, 
And bravely strewed their hall about 

With tattered lace and trimming ? 
Was it for such a sad reverse 

Oiu- mobs became peacemakers, 
And kept their tar and wooden horse 

For Englishmen and Quakers ? 

For this did shifty Atherton 

Make gag rules for the Great House ? 
Wiped we for this our feet upon 

Petitions in our State House ? 
Plied we for this our axe of doom. 

No stubborn traitor sparing, 
Who scoffed at our opinion loom, 

And took to homespun wearing ? 

Ah, Moses ! hard it is to scan 

These crooked providences. 
Deducing from the wisest plan 

The saddest consequences ! 
Strange that, in trampling as was meet 

The nigger-men's petition, 
We sprung a mine beneath our feet 

Which opened up perdition. 

How goodly, Moses, was the game 

In which we 've long been actors, 
Supplying freedom with the name 

And slavery with the practice ! 
Our smooth words fed the people's 
mouth, 

Their ears our party rattle ; 
We kept them headed to the South, 

As drovers do their cattle. 

But now our game of politics 

The world at large is learning ; 
And men gro^vn gray in all our tricks 

State's evidence are turning. 
Votes and preambles subtly spun 

They cram with meanings louder, 
And load the Democratic gun 

With abolition powder. 



300 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



The ides of June ! Woe worth the day 

When, turning all things over, 
The traitor Hale shall make his hay 

From Democratic clover ! 
Who then shall take him in the law, 

Who punish crime so flagrant ? 
Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall 
draw, 

A writ against that " vagrant " ? 

Alas ! no hope is left us here. 

And one can only pine for 
The envied place of overseer 

Of slaves in Carolina ! 
Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink, 

And see what pay he 's giving ! 
We've practised long enough, we think, 

To know the art of driving. 

And for the faithful rank and file. 

Who know their proper stations, 
Perhaps it may be worth their while 

To try the rice plantations. 
Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff, 

To see us southward scamper ; 
The slaves, we know, are " better off 

Thau laborers in New Hampshire ! " 



LINES 



FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL 
FRIEND 

A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire, 
A faith which doubt can never dim, 

A heart of love, a lip of fire, 

O Freedom's God ! be Thou to him ! 

Speak through him words of power and 
fear, 

As through Thy prophet bards of old. 
And let a scornful people hear 

Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled. 

For lying lips Thy blessing seek, 

And hands of blood are raised to Thee, 

And on Thy children, crushed and weak, 
The oppressor plants his kneeling kiiee. 

Let then, O God ! Thy servant dare 
Thy truth in all its power to tell. 

Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear 
The Bible from the grasp of hell ! 



From hollow rite and narrow span 
Of law and sect by Thee released, 

Oh, teach him that the Chi-istian man 
Is holier than the Jewish priest. 

Chase back the shadows, gray and old, 
Of the dead ages from his way, 

And let his hopeful eyes behold 
The dawn of Thy millennial day; 

That day when fettered limb and mind 
Shall know the truth which maketh free, 

And he alone who loves his kind 

Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee ! 



DANIEL NEALL 

Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that vener- 
ated philanthropLst, Warner Mifflin, whom the 
Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pro- 
nounced " an angel of mercy, the best man he 
ever knew," was one of the noble band of 
Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was 
equalled only by their gentleness and tender- 
ness. 

I 

Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend of 

all; 
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when 
The need of battling Freedom called for 

men 
To plant the banner on the outer wall ; 
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress 
Melted to more than woman's tenderness. 
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post 
Fronting the violence of a maddened host. 
Like some gray rock from which the waves 

are tossed ! 
Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned 

not 
The faith of one whose walk and word 

were right ; 
Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field 

wrought, 

And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught 

A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white : 

Prompt to redress another's wrong, his own 

Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence 

alone. 



Such was our friend. Formed on the good 

old plan, 
A true and brave and downright honest 

man I 



TO DELAWARE 



3^1 



He blew no trumpet in the market-place, 
Nor in the church with hypocritic face 
Supplied with cant the lack of' Christian 

grace ; 
Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful 

will 
What others talked of while their hands 

were still ; 
And, while " Lord, Lord ! " the pious tyrants 

cried, 
Who, in the poor, their Master crucified. 
His daily prayer, far better understood 
In acts than words, was simply doing 

good. 
So calm, so constant was his rectitude. 
That by his loss alone we know its worth. 
And feel how true a man has walked with 

us on earth. 



SONG OF SLAVES IN THE 
DESERT 

[Suggested by a passage in Richardson's 
Journal in Africa.] 

Where are we going ? where are we going, 

Where are we going, Rubee ? 
Lord of peoples, lord of lands. 
Look across these shining sands. 
Through the furnace of the noon. 
Through the Avhite light of the moon. 
Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing. 
Strange and large the world is growing ! 
Speak and tell us where we are going, 

Where are we going, Rubee ? 

Bornou land was rich and good, 
Wells of water, fields of food, 
Dourra fields, and bloom of bean. 
And the palm-tree cool and green : 
Bornou land we see no longer. 
Here we thirst and here we hunger. 
Here the Moor-man smites in anger : 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 

When we went from Bornou land, 
We were like the leaves and sand, 
We were many, we are few ; 
Life has one, and death has two : 
Whitened bones our path are showing, 
Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing ! 
Hear us, tell us, where are we going, 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 



Moons of marches from our eyes 
Bornou land behind us lies ; 
Stranger round us day by day 
Bends the desert circle gray ; 
Wild the waves of sand are flowing. 
Hot the winds above them blowing, — 



going 



Lord of all things ! where are we 
Where are we going, Rubee ' 



We are weak, but Thou art strong ; 
Short our lives, but Thine is long ; 
We are blind, but Thou hast eyes ; 
We are fools, but Thou art wise ! 
Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing 
Through the strange world round us grow- 
ing, 
Hear us, tell us where are we going. 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 



TO DELAWARE 

Written during the discussion in the Legis- 
lature of that State, in the winter of 1846-^7, 
of a bUl for the abolition of slavery. 

Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East, 

To the strong tillers of a rugged home. 
With spray-wet locks to Northern winds 
released. 
And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's 
foam ; 
And to the young nymphs of the golden 
West, 
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with 
prairie bloom, 
Trail in the sunset, — O redeemed and 
blest. 
To the warm welcome of thy sisters 
come ! 
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white 
bay 
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from her 
plains. 
And the great lakes, where echo, free alway, 
Moaned never shoreward with the clank 
of chains. 
Shall weave new sun-bows in their tossing 

spray. 
And all their waves keep grateful holiday. 
And, smiling on thee through her mountain 
rains, 
Vermont shall bless thee ; and the gran- 
ite peaks, 



302 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall 

wear 
Their snow-crowiis brighter in the cold, 
keen air ; 
And Massachusetts, with her rugged 
cheeks 
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn to 
thee, 
When, at thy bidding, the electric wire 
Shall tremble northward with its words 
of fire ; 
Glory and praise to God ! another State is 
free ! 

YORKTOWN 

Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel's regi- 
ment, in his description of the siege of York- 
town, says : " The labor on the Virginia plan- 
tations is performed altogether by a species 
of the human race cruelly wrested from their 
native country, and doomed to perpetual bond- 
age, while their masters are manfully contend- 
ing for freedom and the natural rights of man. 
Such is the inconsistency of human nature." 
Eighteen hundred slaves were found at York- 
town, after its surrender, and restored to their 
masters. Well was it said by Dr. Barnes, in 
his late work on Slavery : " No slave was any 
nearer his freedom after the surrender of York- 
town than when Patrick Henry first taught the 
notes of liberty to echo among the hills and 
vales of Virginia." 

From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still. 
Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill : 
Who curbs his steed at head of one ? 
Hark ! the low murmur : Washington ! 
Who bends his keen, approving glance. 
Where down the gorgeous line of France 
Shine knightly star and plume of snow ? 
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau ! 

The earth which bears this calm array 
Shook with the war-charge yesterday, 
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and 

wheel, 
Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel ; 
October's clear and noonday sun 
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun, 
And down night's double blackness fell, 
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell. 

Now all is hnshed : the gleaming lines 
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines ; 



While through them, sullen, grim, and 

slow, 
The conquered hosts of England go : 
O'Hara's brow belies his dress. 
Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless : 
Shout, from thy iired and wasted homes, 
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes i 

Nor thou alone : with one glad voice 

Let all thy sister States rejoice ; 

Let Freedom, in whatever clime 

She waits with sleepless eye her time, 

Shouting from cave and mountain wood 

Make glad her desert solitude. 

While they who hunt her quail with fear j 

The New World's chain lies broken here J 

But who are they, who, cowering, wait 
Within the shattered fortress gate ? 
Dark tillers of Virginia's soil. 
Classed with the battle's common spoil, 
With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine, 
With Indian weed and planters' wine. 
With stolen beeves, and foraged corn, — 
Are they not men, Virginian born ? 

Oh, veil your faces, young and brave ! 
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave ! 
Sons of the Northland, ye who set 
Stout hearts against the bayonet. 
And pressed with steady footfall near 
The moated battery's blazing tier. 
Turn your scarred faces from the sight, 
Let shame do homage to the right ! 

Lo ! fourscore years have passed ; and 

where 
The Gallic bugles stirred the air. 
And, through breached batteries, side by 

side. 
To victory stormed the hosts allied. 
And brave foes grounded, pale with pain. 
The arms they might not lift again, 
As abject as in that old day 
The slave still toils his life away. 

Oh, fields still green and fresh in story, 
Old days of pride, old names of glory, 
Old marvels of the tongue and pen, 
Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of 

men. 
Ye spared the wrong ; and over all 
Behold the avenging shadow fall ! 



RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE 



303 



Your world-wide honor stained vnth. 

shame, — 
Your freedom's self a hollow name ! 

Where 's now the flag of that old war ? 
Where flows its stripe ? Where burns its 

star? 
Bear witness, Palo Alto's day, 
Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey, 
Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak, 
Fleshes tlie Northern eagle's beak ; 
Symbol of terror and despair. 
Of chains and slaves, go seek it there ! 

Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks ! 
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks ! 
Brave sport to see the fledgling born 
Of Freedom by its parent torn ! 
Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell. 
Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell : 
With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled. 
What of the New World fears the Old ? 



RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE 

[Though not published until 1847, several 
lines indicate that the poem was written not 
long after Randolph's death in 1833. In a letter 
published in July, 1883, Whittier says : " In the 
last hour of his [Randolph's] existence, when 
his soul was struggling from its broken tene- 
ment, his latest effort was the confirmation of 
this generous act of a former period [the manu- 
mission of his slaves]. Light rest the turf upon 
him, beneath his patrimonial oaks ! The prayers 
of many hearts made happy by his benevolence 
shall linger over his grave and bless it."] 

O Mother J>arth ! upon thy lap 

Thy weary ones receiving. 
And o'er them, silent as a dream, 

Thy grassy mantle weaving. 
Fold softly in thy long embrace 

That heart so worn and broken, 
And cool its pulse of fire beneath 

Thy shadows old and oaken. 

Shut out from him the bitter word 

And serpent hiss of scorning ; 
Nor let the storms of yesterday 

Disturb his quiet morning. 
Breathe over him forgetfulness 

Of all save deeds of kindness, 
And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, 

Press down his lids in blindness. 



There, where with living ear and eye 

He heard Potomac's flowing. 
And, through his tall ancestral trees, 

Saw autumn's sunset glowing. 
He sleejjs, still looking to the west, 

Beneath the dark wood shadow, 
As if he still would see the sun 

Sink down on wave and meadow. 

Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! in himself 

All moods of mind contrasting, — 
The tenderest wail of human woe. 

The scorn like lightning blasting ; 
The pathos which from rival eyes 

Unwilling tears could summon. 
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 

Of hatred scarcely human ! 

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower. 

From lips of life-long sadness ; 
Clear picturings of majestic thought 

Upon a ground of madness ; 
And over all Romance and Song 

A classic beauty throwing, 
And laurelled Clio at his side 

Her storied pages showing. 

All parties feared him : each in turn 

Beheld its schemes disjointed, 
As right or left his fatal glance 

And spectral finger pointed. 
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down 

With trenchant wit unsparing. 
And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand 

The robe Pretence was wearing. 

Too honest or too proud to feign 

A love he never cherished. 
Beyond Virginia's border line 

His patriotism perished. 
While others hailed in distant skies 

Our eagle's dusky pinion. 
He only saw the mountain bird 

Stoop o'er his Old Dominion ! 

Still through each change of fortune 
strange, 

Racked nerve, and brain all burning, 
His lovang faith in Mother-land 

Knew never shade of turning ; 
By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide, 

Whatever sky was o'er him. 
He heard her rivers' rushing sound, 

Her blue peaks rose before him. 



304 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



He held his slaves, yet made withal 

No false and vain pretences, 
Nor paid a lying priest to seek 

For Scriptural defences. 
His harshest words of proud rebuke, 

His bitterest taunt and scorning, 
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow 

That bent to him in fawning. 

He held his slaves ; yet kept the while 

His reverence for the Hnman ; 
In the dark vassals of his will 

He saw but Man and Woman ! 
No hunter of God's outraged poor 

His Roanoke valley entered ; 
No trader in the souls of men 

Across his threshold ventured. 

And when the old and wearied man 

Lay down for his last sleeping, 
And at his side, a slave no more, 

His brother-man stood weeping. 
His latest thought, his latest breath, 

To Freedom's duty giving. 
With failing tongue and trembling hand 

The dying blest the living. 

Oh, never bore his ancient State 

A truer son or braver ! 
None trampling with a calmer scorn 

On foreign hate or favor. 
He knew her faults, yet never stooped 

His proud and manly feeling 
To poor excuses of the wrong 

Or meanness of concealing. 

But none beheld with clearer eye 

The plague-spot o'er her spreading. 
None heard more sure the steps of Doom 

Along her future treading. 
For her as for himself he spake. 

When, his gaunt frame upbracing, 
He traced with dying hand " Remorse ! " 

And perished in the tracing. 

As from the grave where Henry sleeps, 

From Vernon's weeping willow. 
And from the grassy pall which hides 

The Sage of Monticello, 
So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone 

Of Randolph's lowly dwelling, 
Virginia ! o'er thy laud of slaves 

A warning voice is swelling 1 



And hark ! from thy deserted fields 

Are sadder warnings spoken, 
From quenched hearths, where thy exiled 
sons 

Their household gods have broken. 
The curse is on thee, — wolves for men, 

And briers for corn-sheaves giving ! 
Oh, more than all thy dead renown 

Were now one hero living ! 



THE LOST STATESMAN 



Written on hearing of the death of Silas 
Wright of New York. [Originally entitled 
Lines. ] 

As they who, tossing midst the storm at 

night. 
While turning shoreward, where a bea- 
con shone. 
Meet the walled blackness of the heaven 

alone, 
So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed, 
In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy 

light 
Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour 

of noon, 
While life was pleasant to thy undimmed 

sight. 
And, day by day, within thy spirit grew 
A holier hope tlaan young Ambition knew, 
As through thy rural quiet, not in vain, 
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry 

of pain, 
Man of the millions, thou art lost too 

soon ! 
Portents at which the bravest stand 

aghast, — 
The birth-throes of a Future, strange and 
vast. 
Alarm the land ; yet thou, so wise and 

strong, 
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, 
Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever 

long, 
Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead. 
Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering 

host? 
Who wear the mantle of the leader lost ? 
Who stay the march of slavery ? He 

whose voice 



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE 



305 



Hath called thee from thy task-field 

shall not lack 
Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely 
back 
The wrong which, through his poor ones, 

reaches Him : 
Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torch- 
lights trim. 
And wave them high across the abysmal 
black, 
Till bound, dumb millions there shall see 
them and rejoice. 



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE 

Suggested by a daguerreotype taken from 
a small French engraving of two negro figures, 
sent to the writer by Oliver Johnson. 

Beams of noon, like burning lances, through 
the tree-tops flash and glisten, 

As she stands before her lover, with raised 
face to look and listen. 

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the 

ancient Jewish song : 
Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her 

graceful beauty wrong. 

He, the strong one and the manly, with the 

vassal's garb and hue. 
Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his 

higher nature true ; 

Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of 

a freeman in his heart. 
As the gregree holds his Fetich from the 

white man's gaze apart. 

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the 

driver's morning horn 
Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the 

fields of cane and corn : 

Fall the keen and burning lashes never on 

his back or limb ; 
Scarce with look or word of censure, turns 

the driver unto him. 

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his 

eye is hard and stern ; 
Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has 

never deigned to learn. 



And, at evening, when his comrades dance 
before their master's door. 

Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands 
he silent evermore. 

God be praised for every instinct which 

rebels against a lot 
Where the brute survives the human, and 

man's upright form is not ! 

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral 

fold on fold 
Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it 

withers in his hold ; 

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer 

girds the fell embrace. 
Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine 

is in its place ; 

So a base and bestial nature round the vas- 
sal's manhood twines, 

And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the 
ceiba choked with vines. 

God is Love, saith the Evangel ; and our 

world of woe and sin 
Is made light and happy only when a Love 

is shining in. 

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding, 
wheresoe'er ye roam. 

Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, mak- 
ing all the world like home ; 

In the veins of whose affections kindred 

blood is but a part, 
Of one kindly current throbbing from the 

universal heart ; 

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love 

in Slavery nursed. 
Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that 

Soil accursed ? 

Love of Home, and Love of Woman ! — 
dear to all, but doubly dear 

To the heart whose pulses elsewhere meas- 
ure only hate and fear. 

All around the desert circles, underneath a 

brazen sky, 
Only one green spot remaining where the 

dew is never dry I 



3o6 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



From the horror of that desert, from its 

atmosphere of hell, 
Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the 

diver seeks his bell. 

'T is the fervid tropic noontime ; faint and 

low the sea-waves beat ; 
Hazy rise the inland mountains through the 

glimmer of the heat, — 

Where, through mingled leaves and blos- 
soms, arrowy sunbeams flash and 
glisten, 

Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she 
lifts her head to listen : — 

** We shall live as slaves no longer ! Free- 
dom's hour is close at hand ! 

Kocks her bark upon the waters, rests the 
boat upon the strand ! 

" I have seen the Haytien Captain ; I have 

seen his swarthy crew. 
Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and 

color true. 

" They have sworn to wait our coming till 
the night has passed its noon. 

And the gray and darkening waters roll 
above the sunken moon ! " 

Oh, the blessed hope of freedom ! how with 
joy and glad surprise, 

For an instant throbs her bosom, for an in- 
stant beam her eyes ! 

But she looks across the valley, where her 

mother's hut is seen. 
Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and 

the lemon-leaves so green. 

And she answers, sad and earnest : " It 
were wrong for thee to stay ; 

God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, 
and His finger points the way. 

" Well I know with what endurance, for the 

sake of me and mine. 
Thou hast borne too long a burden never 

meant for souls like thine. 

*' Go ; and at the hour of midnight, when 

our last farewell is o'er. 
Kneeling on our place of parting, I will 

bless thee from the shore. 



" But for me, my mother, lying on her sick- 
bed all the day, 

Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming 
through the twilight gray. 

" Should I leave her sick and helpless, even 
freedom, sliared with thee. 

Would be sadder far tlian bondage, lonely 
toil, and stripes to me. 

" For my heart would die within me, and 
my brain would soon be wild ; 

I should hear my mother calling through 
the twilight for her child ! " 

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the 

sun of morning-time. 
Through the coifee-trees in blossom, and 
green hedges of the lime. 

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the 

lover and the maid ; 
Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning 

forward on his spade ? 

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he : 'tis the 

Haytien's sail he sees, 
Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven 

seaward by the breeze ! 

But his arm a light hand presses, and he 

hears a low voice call : 
Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is 

mightier than all. 



THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER- 
BREAKERS 

The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna 
Charta were deemed of such importance, in the 
thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a 
year, with tapers burning and in their pontifi- 
cal robes, pronounced, in the presence of the 
king and the representatives of the estates of 
England, the greater excommunication against 
the infringer of that instrument. The impos- 
ing ceremony took place in the gTeat Hall of 
Westminster. 

In Westminster's royal halls, 
Robed in their pontificals, 
England's ancient prelates stood 
For the people's right and good. 

Closed around the waiting crowd. 
Dark and still, like winter's cloud t 



THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS 



307 



King and council, lord and knight, 
Squire and yeoman, stood in sight ; 

Stood to hear the priest rehearse, 
In God's name, the Church's curse, 
By the tapers round them lit, 
Slowly, sternly uttering it. 

' Right of voice in framing laws. 
Right of peers to try each cause ; 
Peasant homestead, mean and small, 
Sacred as the monarch's hall, — 

' Whoso lays his hand on these, 
England's ancient liberties ; 
Whoso breaks, by word or deed, 
England's vow at Runnymede; 

' Be he Prince or belted knight, 
Whatsoe'er his rank or might. 
If the highest, tlien the worst. 
Let him live and die accursed. 

' Thou, who to Thy Church hast given 
Keys alike of hell and heaven. 
Make our word and witness sure, 
Let the curse we speak endure ! " 

Silent, while that curse was said. 
Every bare and listening head 
Bowed in reverent awe, and then 
All the people said. Amen ! 

Seven times the bells have tolled. 
For the centuries gray and old, 
Since that stoled and mitred band 
Cursed the tyrants of their land. 

Since the priesthood, like a tower. 
Stood between the poor and power ; 
And the wronged and trodden down 
Blessed the abbot's shaven crown. 

Gone, thank God, their wizard spell, 
Lost their keys of heaven and hell ; 
Yet I sigh for men as bold 
As those bearded priests of old. 

Now too oft the priesthood wait 
At the threshold of the state ; 
Waiting for the beck and nod 
Of its power as law and God. 

Fraiid exults, while solemn words 
Sanctify his stolen hoards ; 



Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips 
Bless his manacles and wliips. 

Not on them the poor rely. 

Not to them looks liberty. 

Who with fawning falsehood cower 

To the wrong, when clothed with power. 

Oh, to see them meanly cling, 
Round the master, round tlie king. 
Sported with, and sold and bought, — 
Pitifuller sight is not ! 

Tell me not that this must be : 
God's true priest is always free ; 
Free the needed truth to speak. 
Right the wronged, and raise the weak. 

Not to fawn on wealth and state. 
Leaving Lazarus at the gate ; 
Not to peddle creeds like wares ; 
Not to mutter hireling prayers ; 

Nor to paint the new life's bliss 
On the sable ground of this ; 
Golden streets for idle knave, 
Sabbath rest for weary slave ! 

Not for words and works like these, 
Priest of God, thy mission is ; 
But to make earth's desert glad, 
In its Eden greenness clad ; 

And to level manhood bring 
Lord and peasant, serf and king ; 
And the Christ of God to find 
In the humblest of thy kind ! 

Thine to work as well as pray, 
Clearing thorny wrongs away ; 
Plucking up the weeds of sin, 
Letting heaven's warm sunshine in ; 

Watching on the hills of Faith ; 
Listening what the spirit saith. 
Of the dim-seen light afar, 
Grooving like a nearing star. 

God's interpreter art thou 
To the waiting ones below ; 
'Twixt them and its light midway 
Heralding the better day ; 

Catching gleams of temple spires, 
Hearing notes of angel choirs, 



JC. 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Where, as yet unseen of them, 
Comes the New Jerusalem ! 

Like the seer of Patmos gazing, 
On the glory downward blazing ; 
Till upon Earth's grateful sod 
Rests the City of our God ! 



P.EAN 

This poem indicates the exultation of the 
anti-slavery party, in view of the revolt of the 
friends of Martin Van Buren in New York from 
the Democratic Presidential nomination in 

1848. 

Now, joy and thanks forevermore ! 

The dreary night has wellnigb passed. 
The slumbers of the North are o'er, 

The Giant stands erect at last ! 



More than we hoped in that dark time 
When, faint with watching, few and worn. 

We saw no welcome day-star climb 
The cold gray pathway of the morn ! 

O weary hours ! O night of years ! 

What storms our darkling pathway swept, 
Where, beating back our thronging fears. 

By Faith alone our march we kept. 

How jeered the scoffing crowd behind. 
How mocked before the tyrant train. 

As, one by one, the true and kind 
Fell fainting in our path of pain ! 

They died, their brave hearts breaking slow. 

But, self-forgetful to the last, 
In words of cheer and bugle blow 

Their breath upon the darkness passed. 

A mighty host, on either hand, 

Stood waiting for the dawn of day 

To crush like reeds our feeble band ; 

The morn has come, and where are they ? 

Troop after troop their line forsakes ; 

With peace-white banners waving free, 
And from our own the glad shout breaks. 

Of Freedom and Fraternity ! 

Like mist before the growing light, 
The hostile cohorts melt away ; 

Our frowning foemen of the night 
Are brothers at the dawn of day ! 



As unto these repentant ones 

We open wide our toil-worn ranks, • 

Along our line a murnmr runs 

Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks. 

Sound for the onset ! Blast on blast ! 

Till Slavery's minions cower and quail j 
One charge of fire shall drive them fast 

Like chaff before our Northern gale 1 

O prisoners in your house of pain. 

Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold, 

Look ! stretched o'er Southern vale and 
plain. 
The Lord's delivering hand behold ! 

Above the tyrant's pride of power, 
His iron gates and guarded wall, 

The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower 
Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall. 

Awake ! awake ! my Fatherland ! 

It is thy Northern light that shines ; 
This stirring march of Freedom's band 

The storm-song of thy mountain pines. 

Wake, dwellers where the day expires I 
And hear, in winds that sweep your 
lakes 

And fan your prairies' roaring fires, 
The signal-call that Freedom makes ! 



THE CRISIS 

Written on learning the terms of the treaty 
with Mexico. 

Across the Stony Mountains, o'er the des- 
ert's drouth and sand. 

The circles of our empire touch the western 
ocean's strand ; 

From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild 
and free. 

Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to Califor- 
nia's sea ; 

And from the mountains of the east, to San- 
ta Rosa's shore. 

The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no 
more. 

O Vale of Rio Bravo ! Let thy simple chil- 
dren weep ; 

Close watch about their holy fire let maids 
of Pecos keep ; 



THE CRISIS 



309 



Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's 

pines, 
And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst 

her corn and vines ; 
For lo ! the pale land-seekers conae, with 

eager eyes of gain, 
Wide scattering, like the bison herds on 

broad Salada's plain. 

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what 

somid the winds bring down 
Of footsteps on tlie crisping snow, from 

cold Nevada's crown ! 
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with 

rein of travel slack. 
And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the 

sunrise at his back ; 
By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir 

and pine. 
On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly 

camp-fires shine. 

O countrymen and brothers ! that land of 

lake and plain, 
Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat 

with grain ; 
Of mountains white with winter, looking 

downward, cold, serene. 
On their feet with spring-vines tangled and 

lapped in softest green ; 
Swift through whose black volcanic gates, 

o'er many a sunny vale. 
Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's 

dusty trail ! 

Great spaces yet untra veiled, great lakes 

whose mystic shores 
The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of 

Saxon oars ; 
Great herds that wander all unwatched, 

wild steeds that none have tamed. 
Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds 

the Saxon never named ; 
Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, 

where Nature's chemic powers 
Work out the Great Designer's will ; all 

these ye say are ours ! 

Forever ours ! for good or ill, on us the 

burden lies : 
God's balance, watched by angels, is hung 

across the skies. 
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn 

the poised and trembling scale ? 



Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber 

Wrong prevail ? 
Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in 

starry splendor waves. 
Forego through us its freedom, and bear 

the tread of slaves ? 

The day is breaking in the East of which 

the prophets told. 
And brightens up the sky of Time the 

Christian Age of Gold ; 
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle 

blade to clerkly pen. 
Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her 

serfs stand up as men ; 
The isles rejoice together, in a day are 

nations born. 
And the slave walks free in Tmiis, and by 

Stamboul's Golden Horn ! 

Is this, O countrymen of mine ! a day for 
us to sow 

The soil of new-gained empire with sla/- 
very's seeds of woe ? 

To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old 
World's cast-off crime, 

Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, 
from the tired lap of Time ? 

To run anew the evil race the old lost na- 
tions ran. 

And die like them of unbelief of God, and 
wrong of man ? 

Great Heaven ! Is this our mission ? End 

in this the prayers and tears. 
The toil, the strife, the watchings of our 

younger, better years ? 
Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall 

ours in shadow turn, 
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through 

outer darkness borne ? 
Where the far nations looked for light, a 

blackness in the air ? 
Where for words of hope they listened, the 

long wail of despair ? 

The Crisis presses on us ; face to face with 
us it stands. 

With solemn lips of question, like the 
Sphinx in Egypt's sands ! 

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of 
Fate we spin ; 

This day for all hereafter choose we holi- 
ness or sin ; 



3IO 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's 

cloudy crown, 
We call the dews of blessing or the bolts 

of cursing down ! 

By all for which the martyrs bore their 

agony and shame ; 
By all the warning words of truth with 

which the prophets came ; 
By the Future which awaits us ; by all the 

hopes which cast 
Their faint and trembling beams across 

the blackness of the Past ; 
And by the blessed thought of Him who 

for Earth's freedom died, 
O my people ! O my brothers ! let us 

choose the righteous side. 

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on 
his way ; 

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Fran- 
cisco's bay. 

To make the rugged places smooth, and 
sow the vales with grain ; 

And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible 
in his train : 

The mighty West shall bless the East, and 
sea shall answer sea. 

And mountain unto mountain call. Praise 
God, for we are free ! 



LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF 
A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER 

The lines following' were addressed to a 
magazine publisher, who, alarmed for his 
Southern circulation, not only dropped the 
name of Grace Greenwood from his list of con- 
tributors, but made an offensive parade of his 
action, with the view of streng-thening^ his posi- 
tion among slaveholders and conservatives. 
By some coincidence his portrait was issued 
about the same time. 

A MOONY breadth of virgin face, 

By thought unviolated ; 
A patient mouth, to take from scorn 

The hook with bank-notes baited ! 
Its self-complacent sleekness shows 

How thrift goes with the fawner ; 
An unctuous unconcern of all 

Which nice folks call dishonor ! 



A pleasant print to peddle out 

In lands of rice and cotton ; 
The model of that face in dough 

Would make the artist's fortune. 
For Fame to thee has come unsought, 

While others vainly woo her, 
In proof how mean a thing can make 

A great man of its doer. 

To whom shall men thyself compare, 

Since common models fail 'em. 
Save classic goose of ancient Rome, 

Or sacred ass of Balaam ? 
The gabble of that wakeful goose 

Saved Rome from sack of Brennus 
The braying of the prophet's ass 

Betrayed the angel's menace ! 

So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats, 

And azure-tinted hose on. 
Was twisting from thy love-lorn 

The slow-match of explosion — 
An earthquake blast that would have 

The Union as a feather. 
Thy mstinct saved a perilled land 

And perilled purse together. 

Just think of Carolina's sage 

Sent whirling like a Dervis, 
Of Quattlebum in middle air 

Performing strange drill-service ! 
Doomed like Assyria's lord of old, 

Who fell before the Jewess, 
Or sad Abimelech, to sigh, 

" Alas ! a woman slew us ! " 

Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise 

The danger darkly lurking. 
And maiden bodice dreaded more 

Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkinio 
How keen to scent the hidden plot ! 

How prompt wert thou to balk it. 
With patriot zeal and pedler thrift. 

For country and for pocket ! 

Thy likeness here is doubtless well. 

But higher honor 's due it ; 
On auction-block and negro-jail 

Admiring eyes should view it. 
Or, hung aloft, it well might grace 

The nation's senate-chamber — 
A greedy Northern bottle-fly 

Preserved in Slavery's amber ! 



DERNE 



311 



DERNE 

The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, 
by General Eaton, at the head of nine Ameri- 
cans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks 
and Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood 
and daring which have in all ages attracted tlie 
admiration of the multitude. The liigher and 
holier heroism of Christian self-denial and sac- 
rifice, in the humble walks of private duty, is 
seldom so well appreciated. 

Night on the city of the Moor ! 

On mosque and tomb, and white-walled 

shore, 
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock 
The narrow harbor-gates unlock, 
On corsair's galley, carack tall. 
And plundered Christian caraval ! 
The sounds of Moslem life are still ; 
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill ; 
Stretched in the broad court of the khan, 
The dusty Bornou caravan 
Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man ; 
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent. 
His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent ; 
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone, 
The merchant with his wares withdrawn ; 
Rough pillowed on some pirate breast. 
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest ; 
And, save where measured footsteps fall 
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall, 
Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew 
Creeps stealthily his quarter through, 
Or counts with fear his golden heaps, 
The City of the Corsair sleeps ! 

But where yon prison long and low 
Stands black against the pale star-glow, 
Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves. 
There watch and pine the Christian slaves ; 
Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives 
Wear out with grief their lonely lives ; 
And youth, still flashing from his eyes 
The clear blue of New England skies, 
A treasm-ed lock of whose soft hair 
Now wakes some sorro^ving mother's 

prayer ; 
Or, worn upon some maiden breast, 
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest ! 

A bitter cup each life must drain. 
The groaning earth is cnrsed with pain, 
And, like the scroll the angel bore 
The shuddering Hebrew seer before, 



O'erwrit alike, without, within. 
With all the woes which follow sin ; 
But, bitterest of the ills beneath 
Whose load man totters down to death, 
Is that which plucks the regal crown 
Of Freedom from his forehead down, 
And snatches from his powerless hand 
The sceptred sign of self-command, 
Effacing with the chain and rod 
The image and the seal of God ; 
Till from his nature, day by day, 
The manly virtues fall away. 
And leave him naked, blind and mute, 
The godlike merging in the brute ! 

Why mourn the quiet ones who die 
Beneath affection's tender eye, 
Unto their household and their kin 
Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in ? 
O weeper, from that tranquil sod, 
That holy harvest-home of God, 
Turn to the quick and suffering, shed 
Thy tears upon the living dead ! 
Thank God above thy dear ones' graves. 
They sleep with Him, they are not slaves. 

What dark mass, down the mountain-sides 

Swift-pouring, like a stream divides ? 

A long, loose, straggling caravan. 

Camel and horse and armed man. 

The moon's low crescent, glimmering o'er 

Its grave of waters to the shore. 

Lights up that mountain cavalcade. 

And gleams from gun and spear and blade 

Near and more near ! now o'er them falls 

The shadow of the city walls. 

Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned 

In the fierce trumpet's charging sound ! 

The rush of men, the musket's peal. 

The short, sharp clang of meeting steel ! 

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lif eblood poured 
So freely on thy foeman's sword ! 
Not to the swift nor to the strong 
The battles of the right belong ; 
For he who strikes for Freedom wears 
The armor of the captive's prayers, 
And Nature proffers to his cause 
The strength of her eternal laws ; 
While he whose arm essays to bind 
And herd with common brutes his kind 
Strives evermore at fearfid odds 
With Nature and the jealous gods. 
And dares the dread recoil which late 
Or soon their right shall vindicate. 



312 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



'T is done, the horned crescent falls ! 
The star-flag flouts the broken walls ! 
Joy to the captive husband ! joy 
To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy ! 
In sullen wrath the conquered Moor 
Wide open flings your dungeon-door. 
And leaves ye free from cell and chain, 
The owners of yourselves again. 
Dark as his allies desert-born. 
Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn 
With the long marches of his band 
Through hottest wastes of rock and sand, 
Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath 
Of the red desert's wind of death. 
With welcome words and grasping hands, 
The victor and deliverer stands ! 

The tale is one of distant skies ; 

The dust of half a century lies 

Upon it ; yet its hero's name 

Still lingers on the lips of Fame. 

Men speak the praise of him who gave 

Deliverance to the Moorman's slave. 

Yet dare to brand with shame and crime 

The heroes of our land and time, — 

The self-forgetful ones, who stake 

Home, name, and life for Freedom's sake. 

God mend his heart who cannot feel 

The impulse of a holy zeal, 

And sees not, with his sordid eyes, 

The beauty of self-sacrifice ! 

Though in the sacred place he stands, 

Uplifting consecrated hands. 

Unworthy are his lips to tell 

Of Jesus' martyr-miracle. 

Or name aright that dread embrace 

Of sufifering for a fallen race ! 



A SABBATH SCENE 

This poem finds its justification in the readi- 
ness with which, even in the North, clergymen 
urged the prompt execution of the Fugitive 
Slave Law as a Christian duty, and defended 
the system of slavery as a Bible institution. 

Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell 
Ceased quivering in the steeple. 

Scarce had the parson to his desk 
Walked stately through his people, 

When down the summer-shaded street 

A wasted female figure. 
With dusky brow and naked feet, 

Came rushing wild and eager. 



She saw the white spire through the trees. 
She heard the sweet hymn swelling : 

pitying Christ ! a refuge give 
That poor one in Thy dwelling ! 

Like a scared fawn before the hounds, 
Right up the aisle she glided. 

While close behind her, whip in hand, 
A lank-haired hunter strided. 

She raised a keen and bitter cry. 
To Heaven and Earth appealing ; 

Were manhood's generous pulses dead ? 
Had woman's heart no feeling ? 

A score of stout hands rose between 

The hunter and the flying : 
Age clenched his staff, and maiden eyes 

Flashed tearful, yet defying. 

" Who dares profane this house and day ? 

Cried out the angry pastor. 
" Why, bless your soul, the wench 's ; 
slave. 

And I 'm her lord and master ! 

" I 've law and gospel on my side. 
And who shall dare refuse me ? " 

Down came the parson, bowing low, 
" My good sir, pray excuse me ! 

" Of course I know your right divine 
To own and work and whip her ; 

Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott 
Before the wench, and trip her ! " 

Plump dropped the holy tome, and o'er 

Its sacred pages stumbling. 
Bound hand and foot, a slave once more, 

The hapless wretch lay trembling. 

1 saw the parson tie the knots. 
The while his flock addressing, 

The Scriptural claims of slavery 
With text on text impressing. 

" Although," said he, " on Sabbath day 

All secular occupations 
Are deadly sins, we must fulfil 

Our moral obligations : 

"And this commends itself as one 

To every conscience tender ; 
As Paul sent back Onesimus, 

My Christian friends, we send her ! " 



IN THE EVIL DAYS 



3^^3 



Shriek rose on shriek, — the Sabbath air 
Her wild cries tore asunder ; 

I listened, with hushed breath, to hear 
God answering with his thunder ! 

All still ! the very altar's cloth 

Had smothered down her shrieking. 

And, dumb, she turned from face to face, 
For human pity seeking ! 

I saw her dragged along the aisle. 
Her shackles harshly clanking ; 

I heard the parson, over all, 
The Lord devoutly thanking ! 

My brain took fire : " Is this," I cried, 
" The end of prayer and preaching ? 

Then down with pulpit, down with priest, 
And give us Nature's teaching ! 

" Foul shame and scorn be on ye all 

Who turn the good to evil. 
And steal the Bible from the Lord, 

To give it to the Devil ! 

" Than garbled text or parchment law 

I own a statute higher ; 
And God is true, though every book 

And every man 's a liar ! " 

Just then I felt the deacon's hand 
In wrath my coat-tail seize on ; 

I heard the priest cry, " Infidel ! " 
The lawyer mutter, " Treason ! " 

I started up, — where now were church, 
Slave, master, priest, and people ? 

I only heard the supper-bell. 
Instead of clanging steeple. 

But, on the open window's sill. 

O'er which the white blooms drifted, 

The pages of a good old Book 
The wind of summer lifted. 

And flower and vine, like angel wings 

Around the Holy Mother, 
Waved softly there, as if God's truth 

And Mercy kissed each other. 

And freely from the cherry-bough 
Above the casement swinging. 

With golden bosom to the sun, 
The oriole was singing. 



As bird and flower made plain of old 

The lesson of the Teacher, 
So now I heard the written Word 

Interpreted by Nature ! 

For to my ear methought the breeze 
Bore Freedom's blessed word on ; 

Thus saith the Lord : Break every yoke. 
Undo the heavy burden ! 



IN THE EVIL DAYS 

This and the four following- poems have 
special reference to that darkest hour in the 
aggression of slavery which preceded the dawn 
of a better day, when tlie conscience of the 
people was roused to action. [Originally en- 
titled Stanzas f 01 the Times, 1850.] 

The evil days have come, the poor 

Are made a prey ; 
Bar up the hospitable door, 
Put out the fire-lights, point no more 

The wanderer's way. 

For Pity now is crime ; the chain 

Which binds our States 
Is melted at her hearth in twain. 
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain : 

Close up her gates. 

Our Union, like a glacier stirred 

By voice below. 
Or bell of kine, or wing of bird, 
A beggar's crust, a kindly word 

May overthrow ! 

Poor, whispering tremblers ! yet we boast 

Our blood and name ; 
Bursting its century-bolted frost. 
Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast 

Cries out for shame ! 

Oh for the open firmament, 

The prairie free. 
The desert hillside, cavern-rent. 
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent. 

The Bushman's tree ! 

Than web of Persian loom most rare. 

Or soft divan. 
Better the rough rock, bleak and bare, 
Or hollow tree, which man may share 

With suffering man. 



314 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



I hear a voice : " Thus saith the Law, 

Let Love be dumb ; 
Clasping her liberal hands in awe, 
Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw 

From hearth and home." 

I hear another voice : " The poor 

Are tliine to feed ; 
Turn not the outcast from thy door. 
Nor give to bonds and wrong once more 

Whom God hath freed. " 

Dear Lord ! between that law and Thee 

No choice remains ; 
Yet not untrue to man's decree, 
Though spurning its rewards, is he 

Who bears its pains. 

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast 

And threatening word ; 
I read the lesson of the Past, 
That firm endurance wins at last 

More than the sword. 

O clear-eyed Faith, and Patience thou 

So calm and strong ! 
Lend strength to weakness, teach us how 
The sleepless eyes of God look through 

This night of wrong ! 



MOLOCH IN STATE STREET 

In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of 
Massachusetts on the ease of the arrest and 
return to bondage of the fugitive slave Tliomas 
Sims it is stated that — 

" It would have been impossible for the 
U. S. marshal thus successfully to have resisted 
the law of the State, without the assistance 
of the municipal authorities of Boston, and 
the countenance and support of a inimerous, 
wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It was 
in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and 
respectable citizens — merchants, bankers, and 
others — volunteered their services to aid the 
marshal on this occasion. . . . No watch was 
kept upon the doing's of the marshal, and while 
the State officers slept, after the moon had 
gone down, in the darkest hour before day- 
break, the accused was taken out of our iuris- 
diction by the armed pohce of the city of 
Boston." 
The moon has set : while yet the dawn 

Breaks cold and gray, 
Between the midnight and the morn 
Bear off your prey ! 



On, swift and still ! the conscious street 

Is panged and stirred ; 
Tread light ! that fall of serried feet 

The dead have heard ! 

The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins 

Gushed where ye tread ; 
Lo ! through the dusk the martyr-stains 

Blush darkly red ! 

Beneath tlie slowly-waning stars 

And whitening day, 
What stern and awful presence bars 

That sacred way ? 

What faces frown upon ye, dark 

With shame and pain ? 
Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim bark ? 

Is that young Vane ? 

Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on 

With mocking cheer ? 
Lo ! spectral Andros, Hutchinson, 

And Gage are here ! 

For ready mart or favoring blast 

Through Moloch's fire. 
Flesh of his flesh, imsparing, passed 

The Tyrian sire. 

Ye make that ancient sacrifice 

Of Man to Gain, 
Your traffic thrives, where Freedom dies, 

Beneath the chain. 

Ye sow to-day ; your harvest, scorn 

And hate, is near ; 
How think ye freemen, mountain-born, 

The tale will hear ? 

Thank God ! our mother State can yet 

Her fame retrieve ; 
To you and to your children let 

The scandal cleave. 

Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press, 

Make gods of gold ; 
Let honor, truth, and maidiuess 

Like wares be sold. 

Your hoards are great, your v/alls are 
strong. 

But God is just ; 
The gilded chambers built by wrong 

Invite the rust. 



THE RENDITION 



515 



What ! know ye not the gains of Crime 

Are dust and dross ; 
Its ventures on the waves of time 

Foredoomed to loss 1 

And still the Pilgrim State remains 

What she hath been ; 
Her inland hills, her seaward plains, 

Still nurture men ! 

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart ; 

Her olden blood 
Through many a free and generous heart 

Still pours its flood. 

That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet, 

Shall know no clieck, 
Till a free people's foot is set 

On Slavery's neck. 

Even now, the peal of bell and gun, 

And hills aflame, 
Tell of the first great trimnph won 

In Freedom's name. 

The long night dies : the welcome gray 

Of dawn we see ; 
Speed up the heavens thy perfect day, 

God of the free ! 



OFFICIAL PIETY 

Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein 
the higher law is invoked to sustain the lower 
one. [Originally entitled Lines.] 

A PIOUS magistrate ! sound bis praise 

throughout 
The wondering churches. Who shall hence- 
forth doubt 
That the long-wished millennium draw- 
eth nigh ?. 
Sin in high places has become devout. 
Tithes mint, goes painful - faced, and 

prays its lie 
Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety ! 

The pirate, watching from his bloody deck 
The weltering galleon, heavy with the 
gold 
Of Acapulco, holding death in check 

While prayers are said, brows crossed, 
and beads are told ; 
The robber, kneeling where the wayside 



On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss 
From his own carbine, glancing still abroad 
For some new victim, offering thanks to 
God! 
Rome, listening at her altars to the cry 
Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of 

hell 
Scour France, from baptized cannon and 
holy bell 
And thousand-throated priesthood, loud 

and high. 
Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky, 
" Thanks to the Lord, who giveth vic- 
tory ! " 
What prove these, but that crime was ne'er 

so black 
As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack ? 
Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he 

lays 
His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase 
And saintly posture, gives to God the praise 
And honor of the monstrous progeny. 
What marvel, then, in our own time to 

see 
His old devices, smoothly acted o'er, — 
Official piety, locking fast the door 
Of Hope against three million souls of 

men, — 
Brothers, God's children, Christ's re- 
deemed, — and then, 
With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee, 
Whining a prayer for help to hide the key ! 



THE RENDITION 

On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Bums, a 
fugitive slave from Virginia, after being under 
arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, 
was remanded to slavery under the Fugitive 
Slave Act, and taken down State Street to a 
steamer chartered by the United States Gov- 
ernment, under guard of United States troops 
and artillery, Massachusetts militia and Boston 
police. Public excitement ran high, a futile 
attempt to rescue Bums having been made 
during his confinement, and the streets were 
crowded with tens of thousands of people, of 
whom many came from other towns and cities 
of the State to witness the humUiatLng spec- 
tacle. 

I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call, 
I saw an earnest look beseech. 
And rather by that look than speech 

My neighbor told me all. 



3i6 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And, as I thought of Liberty 

Marched handcuffed down that sworded 
street, 

The solid earth beneath my feet 
Reeled fluid as the sea. 

I felt a sense of bitter loss, — 

Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath, 
And loathing fear, as if uiy path 

A serpent stretched across. 

All love of home, all pride of place, 
All generous confidence and trust, 
Sank smothering in that deep disgust 

And anguish of disgrace. 

Down on my native hills of June, 
And home's green quiet, hiding all, 
Fell sudden darkness like the fall 

Of midnight upon noon ! 

And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, 
Blood - drunken, through the blackness 

trod, 
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God 

The blasphemy of wrong. 

" O Mother, from thy memories proud. 
Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth, 
Lend this dead air a breeze of health, 

And smite with stars this cloud. 

" Mother of Freedom, wise and brave, 
Rise awful in thy strength," I said ; 
Ah me ! I spake but to the dead ; 

1 stood upon her grave ! 



ARISEN AT LAST 

On the passage of the bill to protect the 
rights and liberties of the people of the State 
against the Fugitive Slave Act. [Originally 
entitled simply Lines.] 

I SAID I stood upon thy grave, 

My Mother State, when last the moon 
Of blossoms clomh the skies of June. 

And, scattering ashes on my head, 
I wore, undreaming of relief. 
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief. 

Again that moon of blossoms shines 
On leaf and flower and folded wing. 
And thou hast risen with the spring ! 



Once more thy strong maternal arms 
Are round about thy children flung, — 
A lioness that guards her young ! 

No threat is on thy closed lips, 
But in thine eye a power to smite 
The mad wolf backward from its light. 

Southward the baffled robber's track 
Henceforth runs only ; hereaway, 
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey. 

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates, 

His first low howl shall downward draw 
The thunder of thy righteous law. 

Not mindless of thy trade and gain, 
But, acting on the wiser plan. 
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man. 

So shalt thou clothe witii life the hope, 
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes 
Of him who sang of Paradise, — 

The vision of a Christian man, 
In virtue, as in stature great 
Embodied in a Christian State. 

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood 
Forbearing long, yet standing fast, 
Shalt win their grateful thanks at last ; 

When North and South shall strive no 
more. 
And all their feuds and *ears be lost 
In Freedom's holy Pentecost. 



THE HASCHISH 

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt 
Of marvels with our own competing, 

The strangest is the Haschish plant. 
And what will follow on its eating. 

What pictures to the taster rise. 
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances ! 

Of Lblis, or of Paradise, 

Set all aglow with Houri glances ! 

The poppy visions of Cathay, 

The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian 
The wizard lights and demon play 

Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian I 



FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 



317 



The MoUah and the Christian dog 

Change place in mad metempsychosis ; 

The Muezzin climbs the synagogue, 
The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses ! 

The Arab by his desert well 

Sits choosing from some Caliph's daugh- 
ters, 
And hears his single camel's bell 

Sound welcome to his regal quarters. 

The Koran's reader makes complaint 
Of Shitan dancing on and off it ; 

The robber offers alms, the saint 

Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Pro- 
phet. 

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes ; 

But we have one ordained to beat it, 
The Haschish of the West, which makes 

Or fools or knaves of all who eat it. 

The preacher eats, and straight appears 
His Bible in a new translation ; 

Its angels negro overseers. 

And Heaven itself a snug plantation ! 

The man of peace, about whose dreams 
The sweet millennial angels cluster, 

Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes, 
A raving Cuban filibuster ! 

The noisiest Democrat, with ease. 
It turns to Slavery's parish beadle ; 

The shrewdest statesman eats and sees 
Due southward point the polar needle. 

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong 
Upon his bench a railing blackguard ; 

Decides off-hand that right is wrong. 

And reads the ten conmiandments back- 
ward. 

O potent plant ! so rare a taste 

Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten ; 

The hempen Haschish of the East 
Is powerless to our Western Cotton ! 



THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS 

This poem and the three following' were 
called out by the popular movement of Free 
State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, 
and by the use of the great democratic m eapou 
— an overpowering majority — to settle the 



conflict on that ground between Freedom and 
Slavery. The opponents of the movement 
used another kind of weapon. [This song- was 
sent to the first company of emigrants by the 
poet. " It is one of those prophecies," says 
E. E. Hale, " for which poets are born, uttered 
before the event and not after. In absolute 
hard fact, the song was sung by parties of em- 
igrants, sung when they started, simg as they 
rode, and sung in the new home."] 

We cross the prairie as of old 

The pilgrims crossed the sea, 
To make the West, as they the East, 

The homestead of the free ! 

We go to rear a wall of men 

On Freedom's southern line, 
And plant beside the cotton-tree 

The rugged Northern pine ! 

We 're flowing from our native hills 

As our free rivers flow : 
The blessing of our Mother-land 

Is on us as we go. 

We go to plant her common schools 

On distant prairie swells. 
And give the Sabbaths of the wild 

The music of her bells. 

Upbearing, like the Ark of old. 

The Bible in our van. 
We go to test the truth of God 

Against the fraud of man. 

No ^ause, nor rest, save where the streams 

That feed the Kansas run. 
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon 

Shall flout the setting sun ! 

We '11 tread the prairie as of old 

Our fathers sailed the sea, 
And make the West, as they the East, 

The homestead of the free ! 



FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 

Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason 
against the slave power. [Originally entitled 
Lines.] 

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, 
Not walk ; with blood too pale and tame 
To pay the debt they owe to shame ; 

Buy cheap, sell dear ; eat, drink, and sleep 



3x8 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want ; 
Pay tithes for soul-insurance ; keep 
Six days to Mammon, one to Canto 

In such a time, give thanks to God, 
That somewhat of the holy rage 
With which the prophets in their age 

On all its decent seemings trod, 
Has set your feet upon the lie, 

That man and ox and soul and clod 
Are market stock to sell and buy ! 

The hot words from your lips, my own, 

To caution trained, might not repeat ; 

But if some tares among the wheat 
Of generous thought and deed were sown. 

No common wrong provoked your zeal ; 
The silken gauntlet that is thrown 

In such a quarrel rings like steel. 

The brave old strife the fathers saw 
For Freedom calls for men again 
Like those who battled not in vain 

For England's Charter, Alfred's law ; 
And right of speech and trial just 

Wage in your name their ancient war 
With venal courts and perjured trust. 

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, 

They touch the shining hills of day ; 

The evil cannot brook delay, 
The good can well afford to wait. 

Give ermined knaves their hour of crime 
Ye have the future grand and great. 

The safe appeal of Truth to Time ! 



LETTER 

FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHO- 
DIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN 
KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLI- 
TICIAN 

Douglas Mission, August, 1854. 
Last week — the Lord be praised for 

all His mercies 
To His unworthy servant ! — I arrived 
Safe at the Mission, via Westport where 
I tarried over night, to aid in forming 
A Vigilance Committee, to send back. 
In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets 

quilted 
With forty stripes save cue, all Yankee 



Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens from 
The Commonwealth of Israel, who despise 
The prize of the high calling of the saints, 
Who plant amidst this heathen wilderness 
Pure gospel institutions, sanctified 
By patriarchal use. The meeting opened 
With prayer, as was most fitting. Half 

an hour. 
Or thereaway, I groaned, and strove, and 

wrestled. 
As Jacob did at Penuel, till the power 
Fell on the people, and they cried 

" Amen ! " 
" Glory to God ! " and stamped and 

clapped their hands ; 
And the rough river boatmen wiped their 

eyes ; 
" Go it, old boss ! " they cried, and cursed 

the niggers — 
Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy, 
" Cursed be Canaan." After prayer, the 

meeting 
Chose a committee — good and pious 

men — 
A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon, 
A local preacher, three or four class-leaders. 
Anxious inquirers, and renewed back- 
sliders, 
A score in all — to watch the river ferry, 
(As they of old did watch the fords of 

Jordan,) 
And cut off all whose Yankee tongues re- 
fuse 
The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill. 
And then, in answer to repeated calls, 
I gave a brief account of what I saw 
In Washington ; and truly many hearts 
Rejoiced to know the President, and you 
And all the Cabinet regularly hear 
The gospel message of a Sunday morning, 
Drinking with thirsty souls of the sincere 
Milk of the Word. Glory ! Amen, and 
Selah ! 

Here, at the Mission, all things have 

gone well : 
The brother who, throughout my absence, 

acted 
As overseer, assures me that the crops 
Never were better. I have lost one negro, 
A first-rate hand, but obstinate and sullen. 
He ran away some time last spring, and 

hid 
In the river timber. There my Indian 

converts 



BURIAL OF BARBER 



3^9 



Found him, and treed and shot him. For 

the rest, 
The heathens round about begin to feel 
The influence of our pious ministrations 
And works of love ; and some of them al- 
ready 
Have purchased negroes, and are settling 

down 
As sober Christians ! Bless the Lord for 

this ! 
I know it will rejoice you. You, I hear, 
Are on the eve of visiting Chicago, 
To fight with the wild beasts of Ephesus, 
Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. May 

your arm 
Be clothed with strength, and on your 

tongue be found 
The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires 
Your brother and co-laborer. Amen ! 

P. S. All 's lost. Even while I write 
these lines. 
The Yankee abolitionists are coming 
Upon us like a flood — grim, stalwart men. 
Each face set like a flint of Plymouth Rock 
Against our institutions — staking out 
Their farm lots on the wooded Wakarusa, 
Or squatting by tiie mellow - bottomed 

Kansas ; 
The pioneers of mightier multitudes, 
The small rain -patter, ere the thunder 

shower 
Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man 

is not. 
Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington, 
Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where 
These rumors of free labor and free soil 
Might never meet me more. Better to be 
Door-keeper in the White House, than to 

dwell 
Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whiten- 
ing, show 
On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed. 
Methiuks I hear a voice come up the river 
From those far bayous where the alligators 
[Mount guard around the camping filibus- 
ters : 
" Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to 

Cuba — 
(That golden orange just about to fall, 
O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap ;) 
Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say. 
Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow 
The message of our gospel, thither borne 
Upon the point of Quitman's bowie knife, 



And the persuasive lips of Colt's revolvers. 

There may'st thou, underneath thy vine 
and fig-tree, 

Watch thy increase of sugar cane and ne- 
groes. 

Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent ! " 

Amen : So mote it be. So prays your 
friend. 



BURIAL OF BARBER 

Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855| 
near Lawrence, Kansas. 

Bear him, comrades, to his grave ; 
Never over one more brave 

Shall the prairie grasses weep, 
In the ages yet to come. 
When the millions in our room, 

What we sow in tears, shall reap. 

Bear him up the icy hill, 
With the Kansas, frozen still 

As his noble heart, below. 
And the land he came to till 
With a freeman's thews and will. 

And his poor hut roofed with snow ! 

One more look of that dead face, 
Of his murder's ghastly trace ! 

One more kiss, O widowed one ! 
Lay your left hands on his brow. 
Lift your right hands up, and vow 

That his work shall yet be done. 

Patience, friends 1 The eye of God 
Every path by Murder trod 

Watches, lidless, day and night ; 
And the dead man in his shroud. 
And his widow weeping loud. 

And our hearts, are in His sight. 

Every deadly threat that swells 
With the roar of gambling hells. 

Every brutal jest and jeer. 
Every wicked thought and plan 
Of the cruel heart of man. 

Though but whispered, He can hear ! 

We in suffering, they in crime, 
Wait the just award of time. 

Wait the vengeance that is due ; 
Not in vain a heart shall break, 
Not a tear for Freedom's sake 

Fall unheeded : God is true. 



320 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



While the flag with stars bedecked 


Wild-wailing from Missouri's flooil 


Threatens where it should protect, 


The crying of thy children's blood 


And the Law shakes hands with Crime, 


Is in thy ears to-day ! 


Wliat is left us but to wait, 


' 


Match our patience to our fate, 


And unto thee in Freedom's hour 


And abide the better time ? 


Of sorest need God gives the power 




To ruin or to save ; 


Patience, friends ! The human heart 


To wound or heal, to blight or ble&s 


Everywhere shall take our part. 


With fertile field or wilderness, 


Everywhere for us shall pray ; 


A free home or a grave ! 


On our side are nature's laws, 




And God's life is in the cause 


Then let thy virtue match the crime, 


That we suffer for to-day. 


Rise to a level with the time ; 




And, if a son of thine 


Well to suffer is divine ; 


Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like 


Pass the watchword down the line, 


For Fatherland and Freedom strike 


Pass the countersign : " Endure." 


As Justice gives the sign. 


Not to him who rashly dares. 




But to him who nobly bears, 


Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease, 


Is the victor's garland sure. 


The great occasion's forelock seize ; 




And let the north-wind strong. 


Frozen earth to frozen breast. 


And golden leaves of autumn, be 


Lay our slain one down to rest ; 
Lay him down in hope and faith, 


Thy coronal of Victory 


And thy triumphal song. 


And above the broken sod, 




Once again, to Freedom's God, 




Pledge ourselves for life or death, 


LE MARAIS DU CYGNE 


That the State whose walls we lay. 


The massacre of unarmed and unoffending 


In our blood and tears, to-day. 


men, in Southern Kansas, in May, 1858, took 


Shall be free from bonds of shame, 


place near the Marais du Cygne of the French 


And our goodly land untrod 


voyageurs. 


By the feet of Slavery, shod 




With cursing as with flame ! 


A BLUSH as of roses 




Where rose never grew ! 


Plant the Buckeye on his grave, 


Great drops on the bunch-grass, 


For the hunter of the slave 


But not of the dew 1 


In its shadow cannot rest ; 


A taint in the sweet air 


And let martyr mound and tree 


For wild bees to shun I 


Be our pledge and guaranty 
Of the freedom of the West ! 


A stain that shall never 


Bleach out in the sun 1 




Back, steed of the prairies ! 


TO PENNSYLVANIA 


Sweet song-bird, fly back I 




Wheel hither, bald vulture ! 


State prayer-founded ! never hung 


Gray wolf, call thy pack I 


Such choice upon a people's tongue. 


The foul human vultures 


Such power to bless or ban, 


Have feasted and fled ; 


As that which makes thy whisper Fate, 


The wolves of the Border 


For which on thee the centuries wait. 


Have crept from the dead. 


And destinies of man ! 






From the hearths of their cabins, 


Across thy Alleghanian chain, 


The fields of their corn, 


With groanings from a land in pain, 


Unwarned and unweaponed, 


The west-wind finds its way : 


The victims were torn, — 



THE PASS OF THE SIERRA 



32] 



By the whirhviud of murder 
Swooped up and swept on 

To the low, reedy fen-lauds, 
The Marsh of the Swau. 

With a vain plea for mercy 

No stout knee was crooked ; 
In the mouths of the rifles 

Right manly they looked. 
How paled the May sunshine, 

O Marais du Cygne ! 
On death for the strong life, 

On red grass for green ! 

In the homes of their rearing, 

Yet warm with their lives. 
Ye wait the dead only, 

Poor children and wives I 
Put out the red forge-fire, 

The smith shall not come ; 
Unyoke the brown oxen. 

The ploughman lies dumb. 

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh, 

O dreary death-train, 
With pressed lips as bloodless 

As lips of the slain ! 
Kiss down the young eyelids. 

Smooth down the gray hairs ; 
Let tears quench the curses 

That burn through your prayers. 

Strong man of the prairies. 

Mourn bitter and wild ! 
Wail, desolate woman ! 

Weep, fatherless child ! 
But the grain of God springs up 

From ashes beneath, 
And the crowTi of his harvest 

Is life out of death. 

Not in vain on the dial 

The shade moves along, 
To point the great contrasts 

Of right and of wrong : 
Free homes and free altars, 

Free prairie and flood, — 
The reeds of the Swan's Marsh, 

Whose bloom is of blood ! 

On the lintels of Kansas 
That blood shall not dry ; 

Henceforth the Bad Angel 
Shall harmless go by ; 



Henceforth to the sunset. 
Unchecked on her way. 

Shall Liberty follow 
The march of the day. 



THE PASS OF THE SIERRA 

All night above their rocky bed 
They saw the stars march slow ; 

The wild Sierra overhead, 
The desert's death below. 

The Indian from his lodge of bark, 
The gray bear from his den. 

Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark, 
Glared on the mountain men. 

Still upward turned, with anxious strain, 

Their leader's sleepless eye. 
Where splinters of the mountain chain 

Stood black against the sky. 

The night waned slow : at last, a glow, 

A gleam of sudden fire. 
Shot up behind the walls of snow, 

And tipped each icy spire. 

" Up, men ! " he cried, " yon rocky cone, 
To-day, please God, we '11 pass. 

And look from Winter's frozen throne 
On Summer's flowers and grass ! * 

They set their faces to the blast. 

They trod the eternal snow. 
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last 

The promised land below. 

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed 

By many an icy horn ; 
Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed. 

And green with vines and corn. 

They left the Winter at their backs 

To flap his baffled wing, 
And downward, with the cataracts. 

Leaped to the lap of Spring. 

Strong leader of that mountain band, 

Another task remains, 
To break from Slavery's desert land 

A path to Freedom's plains. 

The winds are wild, the way is drear, 
Yet, flasliing through the night, 



322 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Lo ! icy ridge and rocky spear 
Blaze out in morning liglit 1 

Rise up, Fremont, and go before ; 

The Hour must have its Man ; 
Put on the hunting-shirt once more, 

And lead in Freedom's van ! 



A SONG FOR THE TIME 

Written in the summer of 1856, during' the 
political campaign of the Free Soil party under 
the candidacy of John C. Fremont. 

Up, laggards of Freedom ! — our free flag 

is cast 
To the blaze of the sun and the wings of 

the blast ; 
Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely 

begun, 
From a foe that is breaking, a field that 's 

half won ? 

Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears 

not the Lord, 
Let him join that foe's service, accursed and 

abhorred ! 
Let him do his base will, as the slave only 

can, — 
Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off 

the Man ! 

Let him go where the cold blood that creeps 

in his veins 
Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his 

chains ; 
Where the black slave shall laugh in his 

bonds, to behold 
The White Slave beside him, self-fettered 

and sold ! 

But ye, who still boast of hearts beating 
and warm. 

Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like 
waves in a storm, 

Come, throng round our banner in Liberty's 
name, 

Like winds from your mountains, like prai- 
ries aflame ! 

Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night. 
Now, forced from his covert, stands black 
in the light. 



Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful ta 

God, 
Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed 

where he trod ! 

For deeper than thunder of summer's loud 

shower. 
On the dome of the sky God is striking the 

hour ! 
Shall we falter before what we 've prayed 

for so long, 
When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right 

is so strong ? 

Come forth all together ! come old and come 
young, 

Freedom's vote in each hand, and her song 
on each tongue ; 

Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in 
mail ; 

The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right can- 
not fail I 

Like leaves of the summer once numbered 

the foe, 
But the hoar-frost is falling, the northern 

winds blow ; 
Like leaves of November erelong shall they 

fall, 
For earth wearies of them, and God 's over 

all! 



WHAT OF THE DAY? 



Written during the stirring weeks when the 
great political battle for Freedom under Fre- 
mont's leadership was permitting strong hope 
of success, — a hope overshadowed and solem- 
nized by a sense of the magnitude of the bar- 
baric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous 
and desperate use of all its powers in the last 
and decisive struggle. 

A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air. 
Like the low thunders of a sultry sky 
Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings 
glare ; 
The hills blaze red with warnings ; foes 

draw nigh. 
Treading the dark with challenge and 
reply. 
Behold the burden of the prophet's vision ; 
The gathering hosts, — the Valley of Deci- 
sion, 



THE PANORAMA 



323 



Dusk with the wiugs of eagles wheeling 
o'er. 
Day of the Lord, of darkness and not 
light ! 
It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's 
roar ! 
Even so, Fatlier ! Let Thy will be done ; 
Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou hast be- 
gun 
In judgment or in mercy : as for me, 
If but the least aud frailest, let me be 
Evermore numbered with the truly free 
Who find Tliy service perfect liberty ! 
I fain would thank Thee that my mortal 
life 
Has roaeliod the hour (albeit through care 
and i)ain ) 
When Good aud Evil, as for final strife, 
Close dim aud vast on Armageddon's 
plain ; 
And Michael and his angels once again 
Drive howling back the Spirits of the 
Night. 
Oh for the faith to read the signs aright 
And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight. 
See Truth's white bauner floating on be- 
fore ; 
And the Good Cause, despite of venal 

friends. 
And base expedients, move to noble ends ; 
See Peace with Freedom make to Time 
amends. 
And, through its cloud of dust, the thresh- 
ing-floor. 
Flailed by the' thunder, heaped with 
chaffless grain ! 



A SONG 

INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS 

Written after the election in 1856, which 
showed the immense gains of the Free Soil 
party, and insured its success in 1860. 

Beneath thy skies, November ! 

Thy skies of cloud and rain, 
A.rouud our blazing camp-fires 
We close our ranks again. 
Then sound again the bugles, 
Call the muster-roll anew ; 
If months have well-nigh won the field. 
What may not four years do ? 



For God be praised ! New England 
Takes once more her ancient place ; 

Again the Pilgrim's banner 

Leads the vanguard of the race. 
Then sound again the bugles, etc. 

Along the lordly Hudson, 

A shout of triumph breaks ; 
The Empire State is speaking. 

From the ocean to the lakes. 

Then sound again the bugles, etc. 

The Northern hills are blazing. 
The Northern skies are bright ; 

And the fair young West is turning 
Her forehead to the light ! 

Then sound again the bugles, etc. 

Push every outpost nearer, 

Press hard the hostile towers I 
Another Balaklava, 

And the Malakoff is ours I 
Then sound again the bugles, 
Call the muster-roll anew ; 
If months have well-nigh won the field, 
What may not four years do ? 



THE PANORAMA 

[Written with a view to political effect in 
the Presidential canipaig-n of 1850. It was 
read by T. fStarr King- at the opening of a 
course of lectures ou slavery delivered in Bos- 
ton at that time.] 

•' A ! fredome is a nobill thing ! 
Fredome mayse man to half lilcing. 
Fredome all solace to man giffis ; 
He leyys at ese that frely levys ! 
A nobil hart may haif nane ese 
Na ellys nocht that may him plese 
Gyff Fredome failythe." 

Akchdeacon Barboub. 

Through the long hall the shuttered 

windows shed 
A dubious light ou every upturned head ; 
On locks like those of Absalom the fair. 
On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair. 
On blank indifference and on curious stare ; 
On the pale ShowTiian reading from his 

stage 
The hieroglyphics of tliat facial page ; 
Half sad, half scornful, listening to the 

bruit 
Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot, 



324 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And the shrill call, across the general din, 
" Roll up your curtain ! Let the show be- 
gin!" 

At length a murmur like the winds that 
break 
Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake, 
Deepened and swelled to music clear and 

loud, 
And, as the west- wind lifts a summer cloud, 
The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far 
A green land stretching to the evening star. 
Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees 
And flowers hummed over by the desert 

bees. 
Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of green- 
ness show 
Fantastic outcrops of the rock below ; 
The slow result of patient Nature's pains, 
And plastic fingering of her sun and rains ; 
Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely win- 
dowed hall. 
And long escarpment of half - crumbled 

wall, 
Huger than those which, from steep hills 

of vine. 
Stare through their loopholes on the trav- 
elled Rhine ; 
Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind 
A fancy, idle as the prairie wind. 
Of the land's dwellers in an age unguessed ; 
The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West. 

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells sur- 
pass 

The Tartar's marvels of his Land of Grass, 

Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores 

Wave after wave the billowy greenness 
pours ; 

And, onward still, like islands in that 
main 

Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain 
chain. 

Whence east and west a thousand waters 
run 

From winter lingering under summer's sun. 

And, still beyond, long lines of foam and 
sand 

Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land, 

From many a wide-lapped port and land- 
locked bay, 

Opening with thunderous pomp the world's 
highway 

To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far 
Cathay. 



" Such," said the Showman, as the cuiN 

tain fell, 
" Is the new Canaan of our Israel ; 
The land of promise to the swarming North 
Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus 

forth, 
To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil, 
Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil ; 
To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest, 
And the lank nomads of the wandering 

West, 
Who, asking neither, in their love of change 
And the free bison's amplitude of range, 
Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant, 
Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent." 

Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," 
said he, 
" I like your picture, but I fain would see 
A sketch of what your promised land will 

be 
When, with electric nerve and fiery-brained, 
With Nature's forces to its chariot chained, 
The future grasping, by the past obeyed, 
The twentieth century rounds a new de- 
cade." 

Then said the Showman, sadly : " He 

who grieves 
Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves 
Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know 
What needs must ripen from the seeds we 

sow ; 
That present time is but the mould wherein 
We cast the shapes of holiness and sin. 
A painful watcher of the passing hour, 
Its lust of gold, its strife for place and 

power ; 
Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, 

truth, 
Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted 

youth ; 
Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, 
The low, far lights, which on th' horizon 

shine. 
Like those which sometimes tremble on the 

rim 
Of clouded skies when day is closing dim. 
Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain 
The hope of sunshine on the hills again : 
I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that 

pass 
Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass ; 
For now, as ever, passionless and cold, 
Doth the dread angel of the future hold 



THE PANORAMA 



32s 



Evil and good before us, with no voice 

Or warning look to guide us in our choice ; 

With spectral hands outreaching through 

the gloom 
The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom. 
Transferred from these, it now remains to 

give 
The sun and shade of Fate's alternative." 

Then, with a burst of music, touching 

all 
The keys of thrifty life, — the mill-stream's 

fall, 
The engine's pant along its quivering rails. 
The anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails, 
The sweep of scythes, the reaper's whistled 

tune, 
Answering the summons of the bells of noon, 
The woodman's hail along the river shores. 
The steamboat's signal, and the dip of oars : 
Slowly the curtain rose from off a land 
Fair as God's garden. Broad on either hand 
The golden wheat-fields glimmered in the 

sun. 
And the tall maize its yellow tassels spun. 
Smooth highways set with hedge-rows liv- 
ing green. 
With steepled towns through shaded vistas 

seen. 
The school-house murmuring with its hive- 
like swarm, 
The brook-bank whitening in the grist-mill's 

storm. 
The painted farm-house shining through the 

leaves 
Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves. 
Where live again, around the Western 

hearth, 
The homely old-time virtues of the North ; 
Where the blithe housewife rises with the 

day. 
And well-paid labor counts his task a play. 
And, grateful tokens of a Bible free. 
And the free Gospel of Humanity, 
Of diverse sects and differing names the 

shrines, 
One in their faith, whate'er their outward 

signs. 
Like varying strophes of the same sweet 

hymn 
From many a prairie's swell and river's 

brim, 
A thousand church-spires sanctify the air 
Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of 

prayer. 



Like sudden nightfall over bloom and 
green 
The curtain dropped : and, momently, be- 
tween 
The clank of fetter and the crack of thong, 
Half sob, half laughter, music swept along ; 
A strange refrain, whose idle words and low. 
Like drunken mourners, kept the time of 

woe ; 
As if the revellers at a masquerade 
Heard in the distance funeral marches 

played. 
Such music, dashing all his smiles with tears, 
The thoughtful voyager on Pontchartrain 

hears, 
Where, through the noonday dusk of 

wooded shores 
The negro boatman, singing to his oars. 
With a wild pathos borrowed of his wrong 
Redeems the jargon of his senseless song. 
" Look," said the Showman, sternly, as he 

rolled 
His curtain upward. " Fate's reverse be- 
hold ! " 

A village straggling in loose disarray 
Of vulgar newness, premature decay ; 
A tavern, crazy with its whiskej' brawls. 
With ^^ Slaves at Auction ! " garnishing its 

walls ; 
Without, surrounded by a mdtley crowd. 
The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and 

loud, 
A squire or colonel in his pride of place. 
Known at free fights, the caucus, and the 

race. 
Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot, 
And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot, 
Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant 
With pious phrase and democratic cant. 
Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest. 
To sell the infant from its mother's breast. 
Break through all ties of wedlock, home, 

and kin, 
Yield shrinking girlhood up to graybeard 

sin ; 
Sell all the virtues with his human stock. 
The Christian graces on his auction-block, 
And coolly count on shrewdest bargains 

driven 
In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven I 

Look once again ! The moving canvas 
shows 
A slave plantation's slovenly repose, 



326 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their 
weeds, 

Tlie human chattel eats, and sleeps, and 
breeds ; 

And, held a brute, in practice, as in law. 

Becomes in fact the thing he 's taken for. 

There, early summoned to the hemp and 
corn, 

The nursing mother leaves her child new- 
born ; 

There haggard sickness, weak and deathly 
faint, 

Crawls to his task, and fears to make com- 
plaint ; 

And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay, 

Weep for their lost ones sold and torn 
away ! 

Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands. 

In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands ; 

The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds 
unclean. 

The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. 

Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, 

Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift ; 

Within, profusion to discomfort joined. 

The listless body and the vacant mind ; 

The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, 
born 

In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and 
scorn ! 

There, all the vices, which, like birds ob- 
scene. 

Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean, 

From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, 

Pollute the nursery where the child-heir 
lies. 

Taint infant lips beyond all after cure. 

With the fell poison of a breast impure ; 

Touch boyhood's passions with the breath of 
flame. 

From girlhood's instincts steal the blush of 
shame. 

So swells, from low to high, from weak to 
strong, 

The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong ; 

Guilty or guiltless, all within its range 

Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge. 

Still scenes like these the moving chart 

reveals. 
Up the long western steppes the blighting 

steals ; 
Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate 
Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate : 
From sea to sea the drear eclipse is thrown, 



From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres have 

grown, 
A belt of curses on the New World's zone ! 

The curtain fell. All drew a freer breath. 
As men are wont to do when mournful death 
Is covered from their sight. The Showman 

stood 
With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude 
One moment, then with sudden gesture 

shook 
His loose hair back, and with the air and 

look 
Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage 
And listening group, the presence of the 

age, 
And lieard the footsteps of the things to be, 
Poured out his soul in earnest words and 

free. 

" O friends ! " he said, " in this poor trick 

of paint 
You see the semblance, incomplete and 

faint. 
Of the two-fronted Future, which, to-day, 
Stands dim and silent, waiting in your way. 
To-day your servant, subject to your will ; 
To-morrow, master, or for good or ill. 
If the dark face of Slavery on you turns, 
If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns, 
If the world granary of the West is made 
The last foul market of the slaver's trade. 
Why rail at fate ? The mischief is your 

own. 
Why hate your neighbor ? Blame your- 



" Men of the North ! The South you 

charge with wrong 
Is weak and poor, while you are rich and 

strong. 
If questions, — idle and absurd as those 
The old-time monks and Paduan doctors 

chose, — , 
Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and dead 

banks. 
And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke your 

ranks. 
Your thews united could, at once, roll back 
The jostled nation to its primal track. 
Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, just, 
True to the faith your fathers left in trust, 
If stainless honor outweighed in your scale 
A codfish quintal or a factory bale, 
Full many a noble heart, (and such remain 



THE PANORAMA 



327 



In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's plain, 

Who watch and wait, and from the wrong's 
control 

Keep white and pure their chastity of soul,) 

Now sick to loathing of your weak com- 
plaints. 

Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers as 
saints. 

Would half-way meet the frankness of your 
tone, 

And feel their pulses beating with your 



" The North ! the South ! no geographic 

line 
Can fix the boundary or the point define, 
Since each with each so closely interblends. 
Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom 

ends. 
Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reaching, 

hide 
Of the fell Upas on the Southeru side ; 
The tree whose branches in your north winds 

wave 
Dropped its young blossoms on Mount 

Vernon's grave ; 
The nursing growth of Monticello's crest, 
Is now the glory of the free Northwest ; 
To the wise maxims of her olden school 
Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul ; 
Seward's words of power, aud Sumner's 

fresh renown. 
Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid down ! 
And when, at length, her years of madness 

o'er. 
Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates' 

shore, 
From her long lapse to savagery, her mouth 
Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the 

South, 
Resumes her old attire, and seeks to smooth 
Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth, 
Her early faith shall find a tongue again, 
New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that old 

refrain. 
Her sons with yours renew the ancient 

pact, 
The myth of Union prove at last a fact ! 
Then, if one murmur mars the wide con- 
tent, 
Some Northern lip will drawl the last dis- 
sent, 
Some Union-saving patriot of ^our own 
Lament to find liis occupation gone. 



" Grant that the North 's insulted, 
scorned, betrayed, 
O'erreached in bargains mth her neigbbj^r 

made. 
When selfish thrift and party held the scales 
For peddling dicker, not for honest sales, — 
Whom shall we strike ? Who most de- 
serves our blame ? 
The braggart Southron, open in his aim, 
And bold as wicked, crashing straight 

through all 
That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball ? 
Or the mean traitor, breathing northern 

air, 
With nasal speech and puritanic hair, 
Whose cant the loss of principle survives, 
As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives ; 
Who, caught, chin -buried in some foul 

offence. 
Puts on a look of injured innocence. 
And consecrates his baseness to the cause 
Of constitution, union, and the laws ? 

" Praise to the place-man who can hold 
aloof 
His still unpurchased manhood, office- 
proof 
Who on his round of duty walks erect, 
And leaves it only rich in self-respect ; 
As More maintained his virtue's lofty poi't 
In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody 

court. 
But, if exceptions here and there are found, 
Who tread thus safely on enchanted ground, 
Tlie normal type, the fitting symbol still 
Of those who fatten at the public mill. 
Is the chained dog beside his master's door, 
Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four ! 

" Give me the heroes who, at tuck of 
drum. 
Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum ! 
Or they who, doubly armed with vote and 

Following thy lead, illustrious Atchison, 

Their drunken franchise shift from scene 
to scene, 

As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillotine ! 

Rather than him who, born beneath our 
skies, 

To Slavery's hand its supplest tool sup- 
plies ; 

The party felon whose unblushing face 

Looks from the pillory of his bribe of place, 



32^ 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And coolly makes a merit of disgrace, 
Points to the footmarks of indignant scorn, 
Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing 

horn ; 
And passes to his credit side the sum 
Of all that makes a scomidrel's martyr- 
dom ! 

" Bane of the North, its canker and its 
moth ! 
These modern Esaus, bartering rights for 

broth 1 
Taxing our justice, with their double claim, 
As fools for pity, and as knaves for blame ; 
Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, within 
The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of 

sin, 
Part at the outset with their moral sense, 
The watchful angel set for Truth's defence ; 
Confound all contrasts, good and ill ; re- 
verse 
The poles of life, its blessing and its curse ; 
And lose thenceforth from their perverted 

sight 
The eternal difference 'twixt the wi-ong 

and right ; 
To them the Law is but the iron span 
That girds the ankles of imbruted man ; 
To them the Gospel has no higher aim 
Than simple sanction of the master's claim. 
Dragged in the slime of Slavery's loath- 
some trail, 
Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail ! 

" Such are the men who, with instinctive 

dread, 
Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping head. 
Make prophet-tripods of their oftice-stools. 
And scare the nurseries and the village 

schools 
With dire presage of ruin grim and great, 
A broken Union and a foundered State ! 
Such are the patriots, self-bound to the 

stake 
Of office, martyrs for their country's sake : 
Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of 

Fate, 
And by their loss of manhood save the 

State. 
In the wide gulf themselves like Curtius 

throw, 
And test the virtues of cohesive dough ; 
As tropic monkeys, linking heads and tails. 
Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's 

vales I 



" Such are the men who in your churches 

rave 
To swearing-point, at mention of the slave ! 
When some poor parson, haply unawares. 
Stammers of freedom in his timid prayer^ ; 
Who, if some foot-sore negro through the 

town 
Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him 

down. 
Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease. 
Courts the mild balsam of the Southern 

breeze. 
With hue and cry pursue him on his track, 
And write Free-soiler on the poor man's 

back. 
Such are the men who leave the pedler's 

cart, 
While faring South, to learn the driver's 

art, 
Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious 

aim 
The graceful sorrows of some languid 

dame, 
Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, 

saves 
The double charm of widowhood and 

slaves ! 
Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show 
To what base depths apostasy can go ; 
Outdo the natives in their readiness 
To roast a negro, or to mob a press ; 
Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's 

rail. 
Or make a bonfire of their birthplace mail ! 

" So some poor wretch, whose lips no 

longer bear 
The sacred burden of his mother's prayer, 
By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed, 
Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of 

Christ, 
And, overacting in superfluous zeal, 
Crawls prostrate where the faithful only 

kneel. 
Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to , 

court 
The squalid Santou's sanctity of dirt ; 
And, when beneath the city gateway's span 
Files slow and long the Meccan caravan. 
And through its midst, pursued by Islam's 

prayers. 
The prophet's Word some favored camel 

bears, 
The marked apostate has his place assigned 
The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind, 



THE PANORAMA 



329 



With brush and pitcher following, grave 

and mute, 
In meek attendance on the holy brute ! 

" Men of the North ! beneath your very 
eyes, 
By hearth and home, your real danger lies. 
Still day by day some hold of freedom falls 
Through home-bred traitors fed within its 

walls. 
Men whom yourselves with vote and purse 

sustain. 
At posts of honor, influence, and gain ; 
The right of Slaver3' to your sons to teach, 
And ' South-side ' Gospels in your pulpits 

preach. 
Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear 
On the sharp point of her subverted spear, 
And imitate upon her cushion plump 
The mad Missourian lynching from his 

stump ; 
Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor 
Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more ; 
And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat, 
Sell your old homestead underneath your 

feet ! 
While such as these your loftiest outlooks 

hold. 
While truth and conscience with your wares 

are sold, 
While grave-browed merchants band them- 
selves to aid 
An annual man-hunt for their Southern 

trade, 
What moral power within your grasp re- 
mains 
To stay the mischief on Nebraska's plains ? 
High as the tides of generous impulse flow. 
As far rolls back the selfish undertow ; 
And all your brave resolves, though aimed 

as true 
As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew, 
To Slavery's bastions lend as slio-ht a shock 
As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling rock! 

" Yet, while the need of Freedom's cause 

demands 
The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands, 
Urged by all motives that can prompt the 

heart 
To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest 

part ; 
Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature 

joins 
The warning whisper of her Orphic pines, 



The north-wind's anger, and the south- 
wind's sigh. 

The midnight sword-dance of the northern 
sky. 

And, to the ear that bends above the sod 

Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields of 
God, 

In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer, 

The land's dead fathers speak their hope or 
fear. 

Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's 
hand 

The guiding rein and symbol of command. 

Blame not the caution proffering to your 
zeal 

A well-meant drag upon its hurrying wheel ; 

Nor chide the man whose honest doubt ex- 
tends 

To the means only, not the righteous ends •, 

Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the fears 

Of milder natures and serener years. 

In the long strife with evil which began 

With the first lapse of new-created man, 

Wisely and well has Providence assigned 

To each his part, — some forward, some be- 
hind ; 

And they, too, serve who temper and re- 
strain 

The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the 
brain. 

True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar- 
flame 

With what you have ; let others do the same. 

Spare timid doubters ; set like flint your 
face 

Against the self-sold knaves of gain and 
place : 

Pity the weak ; but with unsparing hand 

Cast out the traitors who infest the land ; 

From bar, press, pulpit, cast them every- 
where, 

By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer. 

And in their place bring men of antique 
mould. 

Like the grave fathers of your Age of Gold ; 

Statesmen like those who sought the primal 
fount 

Of righteous law, the Sermon on the 
Mount ; 

Lawyers who prize, like Quiney, (to our day 

Still spared, Hea%'en bless him !) hcnop 
more than pay, 

And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like Jay ; 

Preachers like Woolman, or like them who 
bore 



33° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



The faith of Wesley to our Western shore, 
And held no convert genuine till he broke 
Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke ; 
And priests like him who Newport's mar- 
ket trod, 
And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts of 

God ! 
So shall your power, with a wise prudence 

used, 
Strang but forbearing, firm but not abused. 
In kindly keeping with the good of all. 
The nobler maxims of the past recall, 
Her natural home-born right to Freedom 

give. 
And leave her foe his robber-right, — to live. 
Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen ! 
Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn 

den ! 
Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of 

flame, 
The focal point of million-fingered shame ! 
Live, till the Southron, who, with all his 

faults. 
Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts. 
Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's 

cheers. 
The hideous nightmare of his dream of 

years, 
And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right 

hand, 
The vile encumbrance from his glorious 

land! 

" So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth 
Its widening circles to the South or North, 
Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the 

stars 
Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars. 
There shall Free Labor's hardy children 

stand 
The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land. 
And when at last the hunted bison tires, 
And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires ; 
And westward, wave on wave, the living 

flood 
Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood ; 
And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread 
Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper- 

led; 
And, gazing downward through his hoar- 
locks, sees 
The tawny Asian climb his giant knees, 
The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to 

hear 
Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer, 



And one long rolling fire of triumph run 
Between the sunrise and the sunset gun ! " 



My task is done. The Showman and his 

show. 
Themselves but shadows, into shadows go ; 
And, if no song of idlesse I have sung. 
Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung ; 
If the harsh numbers grate on tender ears, 
And the rough picture overwrought appears, 
With deeper coloring, with a sterner blast, 
Before my soul a voice and vision passed, 
Such as might Milton's jarring trump re- 
quire, 
Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire. 
Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong 
I leave the green and pleasant paths of song, 
The mild, sweet words which soften and 

adorn. 
For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of scorn. 
More dear to me some song of private worth, 
Some homely idyl of my native North, 
Some summer pastoral of her inland vales, 
Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside 

tales 
Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails. 
Lost barks at parting hung from stem to 

helm 
With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's 

elm. 
Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen ; 
I owe but kindness to my fellow-men ; 
And, South or North, wherever hearts of 

prayer 
Their woes and weakness to our Father bear, 
Wherever fruits of Christian love are found 
In holy lives, to me is holy ground. 
But the time passes. It were vain to crave 
A late indulgence. What I had I gave. 
Forget the poet, but his warning heed, 
And shame his poor word with your nobler 

deed. 



ON A PRAYER-BOOK 

WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEFFER'S 
"CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR," AMERICAN- 
IZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK 
MAN 

It is hardly to be credited, yet is true, that 
in the anxiety of the Nortliern merchant to 
conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher 
was found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer'a 



ON A PRAYER-BOOK 



331 



picture. He intended his edition for use in the 
Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell 
into the hands of those who believed literally 
in a gospel which was to preach liberty to the 
captive. 

O Ary Scheffer ! when beneath thine eye, 
Touched with the light that cometh from 

above, 
Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's 
love, 
No dream hadst thou that Christian hands 

would tear 
Therefrom tlie token of His equal care, 

And make tliy symbol of His truth a lie ! 
The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall 
away 
111 His compassionate gaze, grubbed 

smoothly out. 
To mar no more the exercise devout 
Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray 
Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath 

day ! 
Let whoso can before such praying-books 
Kneel on iiis velvet cushion ; I, for one, 
Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun. 
Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetan brooks. 
Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor. 
No falser idol man has bowed before, 
In Indian groves or islands of the sea, 
Than that which through the quaint- 
carved Gothic door 
Looks forth, — a Church without human- 
ity! 
Patron of pride, and prejudice, and 

wrong, — 
The ricli man's charm and fetich of the 
strong, 
The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and 

shorn. 
The seamless robe of equal mercy torn. 
The dear Christ hidden from His kindred 

flesh. 
And, in His poor ones, crucified afresh ! 
Better the simple Lama scattering wide. 
Where sweeps the storm Alechan's 
steppes along, 
His paper horses for the lost to ride, 
And wearying Buddha with his prayers to 

make 
The figures living for the traveller's sake, 
Than he who hopes with cheap praise to 

beguile 
The ear of God, dishonoring man the while ; 
Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, rusty 
grown, 



Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue 

alone ; 
That in the scale Eternal Justice bears 
The generous deed weighs less than selfish 

prayers. 
And words intoned with graceful unction 

move 
The Eternal Goodness more than lives of 

truth and love. 
Alas, the Church ! The reverend head of 
Jay, 
Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair, 
Adorns no more tlie places of her prayer ; 
And brave young Tyng, too early called 
away. 
Troubles the Haman of her courts no 

more 
Like the just Hebrew at the Assyr- 
ian's door ; 
And her sweet ritual, beautiful but dead 
As the dry husk from which the grain is 

shed. 
And holy hymns from which the life de- 
vout 
Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh gone 

out. 
Like candles dying in exhausted air, 
For Sabbath use in measured grists are 

ground ; 
And, ever while the spiritual mill goes 

round. 
Between the upper and the nether stones, 
Unseen, unheard, the wretched bondman 
groans, 
And urges his vain plea, prayer-smothered, 
anthem-drowned ! 

O heart of mine, keep patience ! Looking 
forth, 

As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, 
Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ 
on earth ; 

The martyr's dream, the golden age fore- 
told ! 
And found, at last, the mystic Graal I see. 

Brimmed with His blessing, pass from 
lip to lip 

In sacred pledge of human fellowship ; 

And over all the songs of angels hear ; 

Songs of the love that casteth out all fear ; 

Songs of the Gospel of Humanity ! 

Lo ! in the midst, with the same look He 
wore. 

Healing and blessing on Geunesaret's 
shore, 



332 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Folding together, with the all-teuder 
might 
Of His great love, the dark hands and the 
white. 
Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain, 
Making all burdens light, and breaking 
every chain. 



THE SUMMONS 

[After publishing this poem Whittier wrote 
to Lucy Lareom : " I do not quite like the tone 
of The Summons now that it is published. It 
was, however, an expression of a state of mind 
which thee would regard as pardonable if thee 
knew all the circumstances. It is too complain- 
ing, and I hope I shall not be left to do such a 
thing again."] 

My ear is full of summer sounds, 
Of summer sights my languid eye ; 

Beyond the dusty village bounds 

I loiter in my daily rounds. 

And in the noon-time shadows lie. 

I hear the wild bee wind his horn, 

The bird swings on the ripened wheat, 
The long green lances of the corn 
Are tilting in the winds of morn, 
The locust shrills his song of heat. 

Another sound my spirit hears, 

A deeper sound that drowns them all ; 
A voice of pleading choked with tears. 
The call of human hopes and fears, 
The Macedonian cry to Paul ! 

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows ; 

I know the word and countersign ; 
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes, 
Where stand or fall her friends or foes, 

I know the place that should be mine. 

Shamed be the hands that idly fold. 

And lips that woo the reed's accord, 
When laggard Time the hour has tolled 
For true with false and new with old 
To fight the battles of the Lord ! 

O brothers ! blest by partial Fate 

With power to match the will and deed. 
To him your summons comes too late 
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight, 
And has no answer but God-speed ! 



TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD 

On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr. Seward 
delivered in the Senate chamber a speech on 
The State of the Union, in which he urged the 
paramount duty of preserving the Union, and 
went as far as it was possible to go, without 
surrender of principles, in concessions to the 
Southern party. 

Statesman, I thank thee ! and, if yet dis- 
sent 
Mingles, reluctant, with my large content, 
I cannot censure what was nobly meant. 
But, while constrained to hold even Union 

less 
Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness, 
I thank thee in the sweet and holy name 
Of peace, for wise calm words that put to 

shame 
Passion and party. Courage may be shown 
Not in defiance of the wrong alone ; 
He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears 
The olive branch, and, strong in justice, 

spares 
The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope 
To Christian charity and generous hope. 
If, without damage to the sacred cause 
Of Freedom and the safeguard of its 

laws — 
If, without yielding that for which alone 
We prize the Union, thou canst save it 

now 
From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow 
A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil 

have known, 
Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest. 
And the peacemaker be forever blest ! 



IN WAR TIME 

TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND 
HARRIET W. SEWALL 

OF MELROSE 

These lines to my old friends stood as dedi- 
cation in the volume which contained a collec- 
tion of pieces under the general title of In 
War Time. The group belonging distinctly 
under that title I have retained here ; the 
other pieces in the volume are distributed 
among the appropriate divisions. 



A WORD FOR THE HOUR 



333 



Olor Iscanus queries : " Why should we 
Vex at the laud's ridiculous uiiserie ? " 
So on liis Usk banks, in the blood-red dawn 
Of England's civil strife, did careless 

Vaughan 
Bemock his times. O friends of many 

years ! 
Though faith and trust are stronger than 

our fears, 
And the signs promise peace with liberty. 
Not thus we trifle with our country's tears 
And sweat of agony. The future's gain 
Is certain as God's truth ; but, meanwhile, 

pain 
Is bitter and tears are salt : our voices take 
A sober tone ; our very liousehold songs 
Are heavy with a nation's griefs and 

wrongs ; 
And innocent mirth is chastened for the 

sake 
Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall 

beat. 
The eyes that smile no more, the unreturn- 

ing feet ! 



THY WILL BE DONE 

We see not, know not ; all our way 
Is night, — with Thee alone is day : 
From out the torrent's troubled drift. 
Above the storm our prayers we lift. 
Thy will be done ! 

The flesh may fail, the heart may faint. 
But who are we to make complaint, 
Or dare to plead, in times like these. 
The weakness of our love of ease ? 
Thy will be done ! 

We take with solemn thankfulness 
Our burden up, nor ask it less. 
And count it joy tliat even we 
May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, 
Whose will be done 1 

Tliough dim as yet in tint and line, 
We trace Thy picture's wise design. 
And thank Thee th.it our age supplies 
Its dark relief of sacrifice. 
Thy will be done ! 

And if, in our unworthiness, 
Thy sacrificial wine we press ; 
If from Thy ordeal's heated bars 



Our feet are seamed with crimson scars, 
Thy will be done ! 

If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by Thee, our present pain 
Be Liberty's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 

Strike, Thou the IMaster, we Thy keys, 
The anthem of the destinies ! 
The minor of Thy loftier strain, 
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain, 
Thy will be done ! 



A WORD FOR THE HOUR 

The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse 
Light after light goes out. One evil star. 
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war, 
As in the dream of the Apocalypse, 
Drags others down. Let us not weakly 

weep 
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep 
Our faith and patience ; wherefore should 

we leap 
On one hand into fratricidal fight, 
Or, on the other, yield eternal right. 
Frame lies of law, and good and ill con- 
found ? 
What fear we ? Safe on freedom's vantage- 
ground 
Our feet are planted : let us there remain 
In imrevengeful calm, no means untried 
Which trutli can sanction, no just claim 

denied, 
The sad spectatocs of a suicide ! 
They break the links of Union : shall we 

light 
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain 
On that red anvil where each blow is pain ? 
Draw we not even now a freer breath, 
As from our shoulders falls a load of death 
Loathsome as that the Tuscan's \actim bore 
When keen with life to a dead horror bound? 
Why take we up the accursed thing again ? 
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more 
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's 

rag 
With its vile reptile-blazon. Let ns press 
The golden cluster on our brave old flag 
In closer union, and, if numbering less. 
Brighter shall shine the stars which still 
remain. 



334 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



"EIN FESTE BURG 1ST UNSER 
GOTT" 

Luther's hymn 

We wait beneath the furnace-blast 

The pangs of transformation ; 
Not painlessly doth God recast 
And mould anew tlie nation. 
Hot burns the fire 
Where wrongs expire ; 
Nor spares the hand 
That from the land 
Uproots the ancient evil. 

The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared 

Its bloody rain is dropping ; 
The poison plant the fathers spared 
All else is overtopping. 
East, West, South, North, 
It curses the earth ; 
All justice dies, 
And fraud and lies 
Live only in its shadow. 

What gives the wheat-field blades of steel ? 

What points the rebel cannon ? 
What sets the roaring rabble's heel 
On the old star-spangled pennon ? 
What breaks the oath 
Of the men o' the South ? 
What whets the knife 
For the Union's life ? — 
Hark to the answer : Slavery ! 

Then waste no blows on lesser foes 

In strife unworthy freemen. 
God lifts to-day the veil, and shows 
The features of the demon ! 
O North and South, 
Its victims both. 
Can ye not cry, 
" Let slavery die ! " 
And union find in freedom ? 

What though the cast-out spirit tear 

The nation in his going ? 
We who have shared the gtiilt must share 
The pang of his o'erthrowing ! 
Whate'er the loss, 
Whate'er the cross, 
Shall they complain 
Of present pain 
Who trust in God's hereafter ? 



For who that leans on His right arm 

Was ever yet forsaken ? 
What righteous cause can suffer harm 
If He its part has taken ? 
Though wild and loud, 
And dark the cloud, 
Behind its folds 
His hand upholds 
The calm sky of to-morrow ! 

Above the maddening cry for blood, 

Above the wild war-drumming. 
Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good 
The evil overcoming. 
Give prayer and purse 
To stay the Curse 
Whose wrong we share, 
Whose shame we bear. 
Whose end shall gladden Heaven ! 

In vain the bells of war shall ring 

Of triumphs and revenges, 
While still is spared the evil thing 
That severs and estranges. 
But blest the ear 
That yet shall hear 
The jubilant bell 
That rings the knell 
Of Slavery forever ! 

Then let the selfish lip be dumb. 

And hushed the breath of sighing ; 
Before the joy of peace must come 
The pains of purifying. 
God give us grace 
Each in his place 
To bear his lot. 
And, murmuring not, 
Endure and wait and labor ! 



TO JOHN C. FR£M0NT 

On the 31st of August, 1861, General Fre- 
mont, then in charge of the Western Depart- 
ment, issued a proclamation which contained a 
clause, famous as the first announcement of 
emancipation: "The property," it declared, 
" real and personal, of all persons in the State 
of Missouri, who shall take up arms against the 
United States, or who shall be directly proven 
to have taken active part with their enemies in 
the field, is declared to be confiscated to the 
public use ; and their slaves, if any they have, 
are hereby declared free men." Mr. Lincoln 



THE WATCHERS 



335 



regarded the proclamation as premature and 
countermanded it, after vainly endeavoring to 
persuade Fremont of his own motion to re- 
voke it. 

Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act 
A brave man's part, without the statesman's 

tact. 
And, taking coimsel but of common sense, 
To strike at cause as well as consequence. 
Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn 
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown 
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine 

own, 
Heard from the van of freedom's hope for- 
lorn ! 
It had been safer, doubtless, for the time, 
To flatter treason, and avoid offence 
To that Dark Power whose underlying 

crime 
Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence. 
But if thine be the fate of all who break 
The ground for truth's seed, or forerun 

their years 
Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts 

make 
A lane for freedom through the level spears. 
Still take thou courage ! God has spoken 

through thee, 
Irrevocable, the mighty words. Be free ! 
The land shakes with them, and the slave's 

dull ear 
Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to 

hear. 
Who would recall them now must first ar- 
rest 
The winds that blow down from the free 

Northwest, 
Ruffling the Gulf ; or like a scroll roll back 
The Mississippi to its upper springs. 
Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack 
But the full time to harden into things. 



THE WATCHERS 

Beside a stricken field I stood ; 
On the torn turf, on grass and wood, 
Hung heavily the dew of blood. 

Still in their fresh mounds lay the slain, 
But all the air was quick with pain 
And gusty sighs and tearful rain. 



Two angels, each with drooping head 
And folded wings and noiseless tread, 
Watched by that valley of the dead. 

The one, with forehead saintly bland 
And lips of blessing, not command, 
Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand. 

The other's brows were scarred and knit, 
His restless eyes were watch-fires lit. 
His hands for battle-gauntlets fit. 

" How long ! " — I knew the voice of 

Peace, — 
" Is there no respite ? no release ? 
When shall the hopeless quarrel cease ? 

" O Lord, how long ! One human soul 
Is more than any parchment scroll, 
Or any flag thy winds unroll. 

" What price was Ellsworth's, young and 

brave ? 
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave, 
Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave ? 

" O brother ! if thine eye can see. 
Tell how and when the end shall be, 
What hope remains for thee and me." 

Then Freedom sternly said : " I shun 
No strife nor pang beneath the sun, 
When human rights are staked and won. 

" I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
I walked with Sidney to the block. 

" The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
Through Jersey snows the march I led, 
My voice Magenta's charges sped. 

" But now, through weary day and night, 
I watch a vague and aimless fight 
For leave to strike one blow aright. 

" On either side my foe they own : 

One guards through love his ghastly throne, 

And one through fear to reverence grown. 

" Why wait we longer, mocked, betrayed, 

By open foes, or those afraid 

To speed thy coming through my aid ? 



336 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



" Why watch to see who win or fall ? 

I shake the dust against them all, 

I leave them to their senseless brawl." 

" Nay," Peace implored : " yet longer wait ; 
The doom is near, the stake is great : 
God knoweth if it be too late. 

" Still wait and watch ; the way prepare 
Where I with folded wings of prayer 
May follow, weaponless and bare." 

" Too late ! " the stern, sad voice replied, 
" Too late ! " its mournful echo sighed. 
In low lament the answer died. 

A rustling as of wings in flight, 

An upward gleam of lessening white. 

So passed the vision, sound and sight. 

But round me, like a silver bell 
Rung down the listening sky to tell 
Of holy help, a sweet voice fell. 

" Still hope and trust," it sang ; " the rod 
Must fall, the wine-press must be trod, 
But all is possible with God ! " 



TO ENGLISHMEN 

Written when, in the stress of our terrible 
war, the English ruling class, with few excep- 
tions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to 
the party of freedom. Their attitude was illus- 
trated by caricatures of America, among which 
was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with 
the motto, " Have n't I a right to wallop my 
nigger ? " 

You flung your taunt across the wave ; 

We bore it as became us, 
Well knowing that the fettered slave 
Left friendly lips no option save 

To pity or to blame us. 

You scoffed our plea. " Mere lack of 
will. 

Not lack of power," you told us : 
We showed our free-state records ; still 
You mocked, confounding good and ill. 

Slave-haters and slaveholders. 

We struck at Slavery ; to the verge 
Of power and means we checked it ; 



Lo ! — presto, change ! its claims you 

urge, 
Send greetings to it o'er the surge. 
And comfort and protect it. 

But yesterday you scarce could shake. 

In slave-abhorring rigor. 
Our Northern palms for conscience' sake : 
To-day you clasp the hands that ache 

With " walloping the nigger ! " 

Englishmen ! — in hope and creed. 
In blood and tongue our brothers ! 

We too are heirs of Runnymede ; 

And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's 
deed 
Are not alone our mother's. 

" Thicker than water," in one rill 

Through centuries of story 
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still 
We share with you its good and ill, 

The shadow and the glory. 

Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave 

Nor length of years can part us : 
Your right is ours to shrine and grave, 
The common freehold of the brave. 
The gift of saints and martyrs. 

Our very sins and follies teach 

Our kindred frail and human : 
We carp at faults with bitter speech, 
The while, for one unshared by each. 
We have a score in common. 

We bowed the heart, if not the knee, 
To England's Queen, God bless her ! 

We praised you when your slaves went 
free: 

We seek to unchain ours. Will ye 
Join hands with the oppressor ? 

And is it Christian England cheers 

The bruiser, not the bruised ? 
And must she run, despite the tears 
And prayers of eighteen hundred years, 
Amuck in Slavery's crusade ? 

Oh, black disgrace ! Oh, shame and loss 
Too deep for tongue to phrase on ! 

Tear from your flag its holy cross. 

And in your van of battle toss 
The pirate's skul'-bone blazon ! 



AT PORT ROYAL 



337 



MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS 

It is recorded that the Chians, when subju- 
fcated by Mithridates of Cappadocia, were de- 
livered up to their own slaves, to be carried 
away captive to Colchis. Athen^us considers 
tliis a just punishment for their wickedness in 
first introducing' the slave-trade into Greece. 
From this ancient villainy of the Chians the 
proverb arose, " The Chian hath bought him- 
self a master." 

Know'st thou, O slave-cursed land ! 

How, when the Chian's cup of guilt 
Was full to overflow, there came 
God's justice in the sword of flame 

That, red with slaughter to its hilt, 
Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's hand ? 

The heavens are still and far ; 
But, not unheard of awful Jove, 
The sighing of the island slave 
Was answered, when the ^^Egean wave 
The keels of Mithridates clove, 
And the vines shrivelled in the breath of 



" Robbers of Chios ! hark," 
The victor cried, " to Heaven's decree ! 
Pluck your last cluster from the vine, 
Drain your last cup of Chian wine ; 
Slaves of your slaves, your doom shall 
be, 
la Colchian mines by Phasis rolling dark." 

Then rose the long lament 
From the hoar sea-god's dusky caves : 
The priestess rent her hair and cried, 
" Woe ! woe ! The gods are sleepless- 
eyed ! " 
And, chained and scourged, the slaves of 
slaves. 
The lords of Chios into exile went. 

" The gods at last pay well," 
So Hellas sang her taunting song, 
" The fisher in his net is caught, 
The Chian hath his master bought ; " 
And isle from isle, with laughter long, 
Took up and sped the mocking parable. 

Once more the slow, dumb years 
Bring their avenging cycle round. 

And, more than Hellas tauglit of old. 
Our wser lesson shall be told, 



Of slaves uprising, freedom-crowned, 
To break, not wield, the scourge wet with 
their blood and tears. 



AT PORT ROYAL 

In November, 1861, a Union force under 
Commodore Dupont and General Sherman cap- 
tured Port Royal, and -from this point as a 
basis of operations the neighboring islands be- 
tween Charleston and Savannah were taken 
possession of. The early occupation of this 
district, where the negro population was greatly 
in excess of the white, gave an opportunity 
which was at once seized upon, of practically 
emancipating the slaves and of beginning that 
work of civilization which was accepted as the 
grave responsibility of those who had labored 
for freedom. 

The tent-lights glimmer on the land. 

The ship-lights on the sea ; 
The night-wind smooths with drifting sand 

Our track on lone Tybee. 

At last our grating keels outslide, 
Our good boats forward swing ; 

And while we ride the land-locked tide, 
Our negroes row and sing. 

For dear the bondman holds his gifts 

Of music and of song : 
The gold that kindly Nature sifts 

Among his sands of wrong ; 

The power to make his toiling days 
And poor home-comforts please ; 

The quaint relief of mirth that plays 
With sorrow's minor keys. 

Another glow than sunset's fire 

Has filled the west with light, 
Where field and garner, barn and byre, 

Are blazing through the night. 

The land is wild with fear and hate, 

The Tont runs mad and fast ; 
From hand to hand, from gate to gate 

The flaming brand is passed. 

The lurid glow falls strong across 
Dark faces broad with smiles : 

Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss 
That fire yon blazing piles. 



338 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



With oar-strokes timing to their song, 

They weave in simple lays 
The pathos of remembered wrong, 

The hope of better days, — 

The triumph-note that Miriam sung, 

The joy of uncaged birds : 
Softening with Afric's mellow tongue 

Their broken Saxon words. 



SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN 

Oh, praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come 

To set de people free ; 
An' massa tink it day ob doom, 

An' we ob jubilee. 
De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves 

He jus' as 'trong as den ; 
He say de word : we las' night slaves ; 
To-day, de Lord's free men. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

We '11 hab de rice an' corn ; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebberyou hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

Ole massa on he trabbels gone ; 

He leaf de land behind : 
De Lord's breflf blow him furder on. 

Like corn-shuck in de wind. 
We own de hoe, we own de plough. 

We own de hands dat hold ; 
We sell de pig, we sell de cow, 
But nebber cliile be sold. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow. 

We '11 hab de rice an' corn ; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

We pray de Lord : he gib us signs 

Dat some day we be free ; 
De norf-wind tell it to de pines, 

De wild-duck to de sea ; 
We tink it when de church-bell ring. 

We dream it in de dream ; 
De rice-bird mean it when he sing, 
De eagle when he scream. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

We '11 hab de rice an' corn ; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you hear 
De driver l)low his horn ! 

We know de promise nebber fail, 
An' nebber lie de word ; 



So, like de 'postles in de jail, 

We waited for de Lord : 
An' now he open ebery door. 

An' trow away de key ; 

He tink we lub him so before, 

We lub him better free. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

He '11 gib de rice an' corn ; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebberyou hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 



So sing our diisky gondoliers ; 

And with a secret pain. 
And smiles that seem akin to tears, 

We hear the wild refrain. 

We dare not share the negro's trust, 

Nor yet his hope deny ; 
We only know that God is just. 

And every wrong shall die. 

Rude seems the song ; each swarthy face, 

Flame-lighted, ruder still : 
We start to think that hapless race 

Must shape our good or ill ; 

That laws of changeless justice bind 

Oppressor with oppressed ; 
And, close as sin and suffering joined. 

We march to Fate abreast. 

Sing on, poor hearts ! your chant shall be 

Our sign of blight or bloom. 
The Vala-song of Liberty, 

Or death-rune of our doom ! 



ASTR^A AT THE CAPITOL 

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DIS- 
TRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1 862 

[The reference in the fourth stanza is to Dr. 
Reuben Crandall of Washington, who, in 1834, 
was arrested and confined in the old city prison 
until his health was destroyed. His crime was 
in lending to a brother physician Whittier's 
pamphlet Justice and Expediency.'] 

When first I saw our banner wave 
Above the nation's council-hall, 
I heard beneath its marble wall 

The clanking fetters of the slave I 



THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862 



339 



In tlie foul market-place I stood, 
Ami saw the Christian mother sold, 
And childhood with its locks of gold, 

Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood. 

I shut my eyes, I held my breath, 

And, smothering down the wrath and 

shame 
That set my Northern blood aflame. 

Stood silent, — where to speak was death. 

Beside me gloomed the prison-cell 
Where wasted one in slow decline 
For uttering simple words of mine, 

And loving freedom all too well. 

The flag that floated from the dome 
Flapped menace in the morning air ; 
I stood a perilled stranger where 

The human broker made his home. 

For crime was virtue : Gown and ^word 
And Law their threefold sanction gave, 
And to the quarry of the slave 

Went hawking with our symbol-bird. 

On the oppressor's side was power ; 

And yet I knew that every wrong. 

However old, however strong, 
But waited God's avenging hour. 

I knew that truth would crush the lie, — 
Somehow, some time, the end would be ; 
Yet scarcely dared I hope to see 

The triumph with my mortal eye. 

But now I see it ! In the sun 

A free flag floats from yonder dome. 
And at the nation's hearth and home 

The justice long delayed is done. 

Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer, 
The message of deliverance comes, 
But heralded by roll of drums 

On waves of battle-troubled air ! 

Midst sounds that madden and appall. 
The song that Bethlehem's shepherds 

knew ! 
The harp of David melting tlirough 

The demon-agonies of Saul ! 

Not as we hoped ; but what are we ? 
Above our broken dreams and plans 



God lays, with wiser hand than man's, 
The corner-stones of liberty. 

I cavil not wth Him : the voice 
That freedom's blessed gospel tells 
Is sweet to me as silver bells. 

Rejoicing ! yea, I will rejoice I 

Dear friends still toiling in the sun ; 
Ye dearer ones who, gone before. 
Are watching from the eternal shore 

The slow work by your hands begun, 

Rejoice with me ! The chastening rod 
Blossoms with love ; the furnace heat 
Grows cool beneath His blessed feet 

Whose form is as the Sou of God ! 

Rejoice ! Our Marah's bitter springs 
Are sweetened ; on our ground of grief 
Rise day by day in strong relief 

The prophecies of better things. 

Rejoice in hope ! The day and night 
Are one with God, and one with them 
Who see by faith the cloudy hem 

Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light ! 



THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862 

The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 

The charging trumpets blow ; 
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky, 

No earthquake strives below. 

And, calm and patient. Nature keeps 

Her ancient promise well. 
Though o'er her bloom and greenness 
sweeps 

The battle's breath of hell. 

And still she walks in golden hours 
Through harvest-happy farms, 

And still she wears her fruits and flowers 
Like jewels on her arms. 

What mean the gladness of the plain, 

This joy of eve and morn, 
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain 

And yellow locks of corn ? 

Ah ! eyes may well be full of tears, 
And hearts with hate are hot ; 



34° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



But even-paced come roiuid the years, 
And Nature changes not. 

She meets with smiles our bitter grief, 
With songs our groans of pain ; 

She mocks with tint of flower and leaf 
The war-field's crimson stain. 

Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear 
Her sweet thanksgiving-psahn ; 

Too near to God for doubt or fear, 
She shares the eternal calm. 

She knows the seed lies safe below 
The fires that blast and burn ; 

For all the tears of blood we sow 
She waits the rich return. 

She sees with clearer eye than ours 
The good of suffering born, — 

The hearts that blossom like her flowers. 
And ripen like her corn. 

Ob, give to us, in times like these. 

The vision of her eyes ; 
And make her fields and fruited trees 

Our golden prophecies ! 

Oh, give to us her finer ear ! 

Above this stormy din. 
We too would hear the bells of cheer 

Ring peace and freedom in. 



HYMN 



SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOLARS 
OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, S. C. 

[Written at the request of the teacher, Miss 
Charlotte Forten, now Mrs. Grimk^.] 

Oh, none in all the world before 

Were ever glad as we ! 
We're free on Carolina's shore, 

We 're all at home and free. 

TTiou Friend and Helper of the poor, 

Who suffered for our sake. 
To open every prison door, 

And every yoke to break ! 

Bend low Thy pitying face and mild, 
And help us sing and pray ; 

The hand that blessed the little child, 
Upon our foreheads lay. 



We hear no more the driver's horn, 

No more the whip we fear. 
This holy day that saw Thee born 

Was never half so dear. 

The very oaks are greener clad, 

The waters brighter smile ; 
Oh, never shone a day so glad 

On sweet St. Helen's Isle. 

We praise Thee in our songs to-day, 

To Thee in prayer we call. 
Make swift the feet and straight the way 

Of freedom unto all. 

Come once again, O blessed Lord ! 

Come walking on tlie sea ! 
And let the mainlands hear the word 

That sets the island free I 



THE PROCLAMATION 

President Lincoln's proclamation of emanci- 
pation was issued January 1, 1863. 

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the 

herds 
Of Ballymena, wakened with these words : 

" Arise, and flee 
Out from the land of bondage, and be free ! " 

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from 

heaven 
The angels singing of his sins forgiven, 

And, wondering, sees 
His prison opening to their golden keys. 

He rose a man who laid him down a slave, 
Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave, 

And outward trod 
Into the glorious liberty of God. 

He cast the symbols of his shame away ; 
And, passing where the sleeping Milcho 

lay, 

Though back and limb 
Smarted with wrong, he prayed, " God par- 
don him ! " 

So went he forth ; but in God's time he 

came 
To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame ; 

And, dying, gave 
The land a saint that lost him as a slave. 



ANNIVERSARY POEM 



341 



dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb 
Waiting for God, your hour at last has 
come, 
And freedom's song 
Breaks the long silence of your night of 


But now the cross our worthies bore 

On us is laid ; 
Profession's quiet sleep is o'er. 
And in the scale of truth once more 

Our faith is weighed. 


wrong ! 

Arise and flee ! shake off the vile restraint 
Of ages ; but, like Ballymena's saint, 

The oppressor spare, 
Heap only on his head the coals of prayer. 


The cry of innocent blood at last 

Is calling down 
An answer in the whirlwind-blast, 
The thunder and the shadow east 

From Heaven's dark frown. 


Go forth, like him ! like him return again, 
To bless the laud whereon in bitter pain 

Ye toiled at first, 
And heal with freedom what your slavery 
cursed. 


The land is red with judgments. Who 

Stands guiltless forth ? 
Have we been faithful as we knew, 
To God and to our brother true, 

To Heaven and Earth ? 


ANNIVERSARY POEM 

Read before the Alumni of the Friends' 
Yearly Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting 
at Newport, K. I., 15th Cth mo., 1SG3. 


How faint, through din of merchandise 

And count of gain. 
Have seemed to us the captive's cries ! 
How far away the tears and sighs 

Of souls in pain ! 


Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath 

A clouded sky : 
Not yet the sword has found its sheath, 
And on the sweet spring airs the breath 

Of war floats by. 


This day the fearful reckoning comes 

To each and all ; 
We hear amidst our peaceful homes 
The summons of the conscript drums, 

The bugle's call. 


Yet trouble springs not from the ground, 

Nor pain from chance ; 
The Eternal order circles round, 
And wave and storm find mete and bound 

In Providence. 


Our path is plain ; the war-net draws 

Round us in vain, 
WhUe, faithful to the Higher Cause, 
We keep our fealty to the laws 

Through patient pain. 


Full long our feet the flowery ways 

Of peace have trod. 
Content with creed and garb and phrase ; 
A harder path in earlier days 

Led up to God. 


The levelled gun, the battle-brand, 

We may not take : 
But, calmly loyal, we can stand 
And suffer with our suffering land 

For conscience' sake. 


Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear, 

Are made our own ; 
Too long the world has smiled to hear 
Our boast of full corn in the ear 

By others sown ; 


Why ask for ease where all is pain ? 

Shall we alone 
Be left to add our gain to gain. 
When over Armageddon's plain 

The trump is blown ? 


To see us stir the martyr fires 

Of long ago. 
And wrap our satisfied desires 
In the singed mantles that our sires 

Have dropped below. 


To suffer well is well to serve ; 

Safe in our Lord 
The rigid lines of law shall curve 
To spare us ; from our heads shall swerve 

Its smiting sword. 



342 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And light is mingled with the gloom, 

And joy with grief ; 
Divinest compensations come, 
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom 

In sweet relief. 

Thanks for our privilege to bless, 

By word and deed, 
The widow in her keen distress. 
The childless and the fatherless, 

The hearts that bleed ! 

For fields of duty, opening wide. 

Where all our powers 
Are tasked the eager steps to guide 
Of millions on a path untried : 

The slave is ours ! 

Ours by traditions dear and old. 

Which make the race 
Our wards to cherish and uphold, 
And cast their freedom in the mould 

Of Christian grace. 

And we may tread the sick-bed floors 

Where strong men pine, 
And, down the groaning corridors. 
Pour freely from our liberal stores 

The oil and wine. 

WEo murmurs that in these dark days 

His lot is cast ? 
God's hand within the shadow lays 
The stones whereon His gates of praise 

Shall rise at last. 

Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand ! 

Nor stint, nor stay ; 
The years have never dropped their sand 
On mortal issue vast and grand 

As ours to-day. 

Already, on the sable ground 

Of man's despair 
Is Freedom's glorious picture found. 
With all its dusky hands unbound 

Upraised in prayer. 

Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice 

And pain and loss, 
When God shall wipe the weeping eyes, 
For suffering give the victor's prize, 

The crown for cross I 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE 

This poem was written in strict conformitv 
to the account of the incident as I had it from 
respectable and trustworthy sources. It haa 
since been the subject of a good deal of con- 
flicting testimony, and the story was probably 
incorrect in some of its details. It is admitted 
by all that Barbara Frietchie was no myth, but 
a worthy and highly esteemed gentlewoman, 
intensely loyal and a hater of the Slavery Re- 
bellion, holding her Union flag sacred and 
keeping it with her Bible ; that when the Con- 
fedei-ates halted before her house, and entered 
her dooryard, she denounced them in vigorous 
language, shook her cane in their faces, and 
drove them out ; and when General Burnside's 
troops followed close upon Jackson's, she waved 
her flag and cheered them. It is stated that 
May Quantrell, a brave and loyal lady in an- 
other part of the city, did wave her flag in 
sight of the Confederates. It is possible that 
there has been a blending of the two incidents. 

Up from the meadows rich with corn. 
Clear in the cool September morn, 

The clustered spires of Frederick stand 
Green- walled by the hills of Maryland. 

Round about them orchards sweep, 
Apple and peach tree fruited deep, 

Fair as the garden of the Lord 

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde. 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
When Lee marched over the mountain- 
wall ; 

Over the mountains winding down. 
Horse and foot, into Frederick town. 

Forty flags with their silver stars. 
Forty flags with their crimson bars. 

Flapped in the morning wind : the sun 
Of noon looked down, and saw not one. 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then. 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten ; 

Bravest of all in Frederick town. 

She took up the flag the men hauled down j 



WHAT THE BIRDS SAID 



343 



In her attic window the staff she set, 
To show that one heart was loyal ^et. 

Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 

Under his slouched liat left and right 
He glanced ; the old flag met his sight. 

" Halt ! " — the dust-brown ranks stood 

fast. 
" Fire ! " — out blazed the rifle-blast. 

It shivered the window, pane and sash ; 
It rent the banner with seam and gash. 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. 

She leaned far out on the window-sill, 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 

" Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 
But spare your country's flag," she said. 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, 
Over the face of the leader came ; 

The nobler nature within him stirred 
To life at that woman's deed and word ; 

" Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog ! March ou ! " he said. 

All day long through Frederick street 
Sounded the tread of marching feet : 

All day long that free flag tost 
Over the heads of the rebel host. 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell 

On the loyal winds that loved it well ; 

And through the hill-gaps smiset light 
Shone over it with a warm good-night. 

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er. 

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. 

Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, 
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave I 



Peace and order and beauty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law ; 

And ever the stars above look down 
Ou thy stars below in Frederick town ! 

WHAT THE BIRDS SAID 

The birds against the April wind 

Flew northward, singing as they flew ; 

They sang*, " The land we leave behind 
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for 
dew." 

"O wild-birds, flying from the South, 
What saw and heard ye, gazing down ? " 

" We saw the mortar's upturned mouth, 
The sickened camp, the blazing town ! 

" Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps. 
We saw your march-worn children die ; 

In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps, 
We saw your dead uncoffined lie. 

" We heard the starving prisoner's sighs 
And saw, from line and trench, your 
sons 

Follow our flight with home-sick eyes 
Beyond the battery's smoking guns." 

" And heard and saw ye only wrong 

And pain," I cried, " O wing - worn 
flocks ? " 
"We heard," they sang, " the freedman's 
song. 
The crash of Slavery's broken locks ! 

" We saw from new, uprising States 
The treason-nursing mischief spurned, 

As, crowding Freedom's ample gates, 
The long-estranged and lost returned. 

" O'er dusky faces, seamed and old, 
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil, 

With hope in every rustling fold, 
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil. 

" And struggling up through sounds ac« 
cursed, 
A gratefid murmur clomb the air ; 
A whisper scarcely heard at first, 

It filled the listening heavens with 
prayer. 



344 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



" And sweet and far, as from a star, 


But, torn by Paynim hatred. 


Replied a voice which shall not cease, 


Her sails in tatters hung ; 


Till, drowning all the noise of war, 


And on the wild waves, rudderless, 


It sings the blessed song of peace ! " 


A shattered hulk she swung 


So to me, in a doubtful day 


" God save us ! " cried the captain, 


Of chill and slowly greening spring, 


" For naught can man avail ; 


Low stooping from the cloudy gray, 


Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks 


The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing. 


Her rudder and her sail ! 


They vanished in the misty air, 


" Behind us are the Moormen ; 


The song went with them in their flight ; 


At sea we sink or strand : 


But lo ! they left the sunset fair, 


There 's death upon the water, 


And in the evening there was light. 


There 's death upon the land ! " 




Then up spake John de Matha : 


THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN 


"God's errands never fail ! 


DE MATHA 


Take thou the mantle which I wear. 




And make of it a sail." 


A LEGEND OF "THE RED, AVHITE, AND 




BLUE," A. D. II54-1864 


They raised the cross-wrought mantle 


A STRONG and mighty Angel, 


The blue, the white, the red ; 


Calm, terrible, and bright. 


And straight before the wind off-shore 


The cross in blended red and blue 


The ship of Freedom sped. 


Upon his mantle white ! 






" God help us ! " cried the seamen, 


Two captives by him kneeling, 


" For vain is mortal skill : 


Each on his broken chain, 


The good ship on a stormy sea 


Sang praise to God who raiseth 


Is drifting at its will. " 


The dead to life again ! 






Then up spake John de Matha : 


Dropping his cross-wrought mantle, 


" My mariners, never fear ! 


" Wear this," the Angel said ; 


The Lord whose breath has filled her 


" Take thou, Freedom's priest, its sign, — 


sail 


The white, the blue, and red." 


May well our vessel steer ! " 


Then rose up John de Matha 


So on through storm and darkness 


In the strength the Lord Christ gave, 


They drove for weary hours ; 


And begged through all the land of France 


And lo ! the third gray morning shone 


The ransom of the slave. 


On Ostia's friendly towers. 


The gates of tower and castle 


And on the walls the watchers 


Before him open flew, 


The ship of mercy knew, — 


The drawbridge at his coming fell, 


They knew far off its holy cross. 


The door-bolt backward drew. 


The red, the white, and blue. 


For all men owned his errand, 


And the bells in all the steeples 


And paid his righteous tax ; 


Rang out in glad accord. 


And the hearts of lord and peasant 


To welcome home to Christian soil 


Were in his hands as wax. 


The ransomed of the Lord. 


At last, outbound from Tunis, 


So runs the ancient legend 


His bark her anchor weighed, 


By bard and painter told ; 


Freighted with seven-score Christian souls 


And lo ! the cycle rounds again. 


Whose ransom he had paid. 


The new is as the old ! 



LAUS DEO 



345 



With riuldei- foully broken, 

And sails by traitors torn, 
Our country on a uiiduigbt sea 

Is waiting for the morn. 

Before her, nameless terror ; 

Behind, the pirate foe ; 
The clouds are black above her, 

The sea is white below. 

The hope of all who suffer, 
The dread of all who wrong, 

She drifts in darkness and in storm, 
How long, O Lord ! how long ? 

But courage, O my mariners ! 

Ye shall not suffer Avreck, 
While up to God the freedman's prayers 

Are rising from your deck. 

Is not your sail the banner 
Which God hath blest anew, 

The mantle that De Matha wore, 
The red, the white, the blue ? 

Its hues are all of heaven, — 

The red of sunset's dye. 
The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud. 

The blue of morning's sky. 

Wait cheerily, then, O mariners, 

For daylight and for land ; 
The breath of God is in your sail. 

Your rudder is His hand. 

Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted 
With blessings and with hopes ; 

The saints of old with shadowy hands 
Are pulling at your ropes. 

Behind ye holy martyrs 

Uplift the palm and crown ; 

Before ye unborn ages send 
Their benedictions down. 

Take heart from John de Matha ! — 

God's errands never fail ! 
Sweep on through storm and darkness, 

The thunder and the hail ! 

Sail on ! The morning cometh. 

The port ye yet shall win ; 
And all the bells of God shall ring 

The good ship bravely in I 



LAUS DEO! 

On hearing the bells ring on the passage of 
the constitutional amendment abolishing slav- 
ery. The resolution was adopted by Congress, 
January 31, 1865. The ratification by the re- 
quisite number of States was announced Decem- 
ber 18, 1865. [The suggestion came to the poet 
as he sat in the Friends' Meeting-house in Ames- 
bury, where he was present at the regular Fifth- 
day meeting. All sat in silence, but on his 
return to his home, he recited a portion of the 
poem, not yet committed to paper, to his house- 
mates in the garden room. ' ' It wrote itself, or 
rather sang itself, while the bells rang," he 
wrote to Lucy Larcom.] 

It is done ! 

Clang of bell and roar of gun 
Send the tidings up and down. 

How the belfries rock and reel ! 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town ! 

Ring, O bells ! 
Every stroke exulting tells 

Of the burial hour of crime. 

Loud and long, that all may hear, 
Ring for every listening ear 

Of Eternity and Time ! 

Let us kneel : 
God's own voice is in that peal. 

And this spot is holy ground. 

Lord, forgive ns ! What are we, 
That our eyes this glory see. 

That our ears have heard the sound ! 

For the Lord 

On the whirlwind is abroad ; 
In the earthquake He has spoken ; 

He has smitten with His thunder 

The iron walls asunder, 
And the gates of brass are broken ! 

Loud and long 
Lift the old exulting song ; 
Sing with Miriam by the sea. 
He has cast the miglity down ; 
Horse and rider sink and drown ; 
" He hath triumphed gloriously ! " 

Did we dare, 
In our agony of prayer, 
Ask for more than He has done ? 



346 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



When was ever His right hand 
Over any time or land 
Stretched as now beneath the sun ? 

How they pale, 
Ancient myth and song and tale, 

In this wonder of our days, 
When the cruel rod of war 
Blossoms white with righteous law, 

And the wrath of man is praise ! 

Blotted out ! 

All within and all about 
Shall a fresher life begin ; 

Freer breathe the universe 

As it rolls its heavy curse 
On the dead and buried sin ! 

It is done ! 
In the circuit of the sun 

Shall the sound thereof go forth. 
It shall bid the sad rejoice, 
It shall give the dumb a voice. 

It shall belt with joy the earth ! 

Ring and swing, 
Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 

Send the song of praise abroad ! 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns. 

Who alone is Lord and God ! 



HYMN 

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPA- 
TION AT NEWBURYPORT 

Not unto us who did but seek 

The word that burned within to speak, 

Not unto us this day belong 

The triumph and exultant song. 

Upon us fell in early youth 
The burden of unwelcome truth, 
And left us, weak and frail and few, 
The censor's painful work to do. 

Thenceforth our life a fight became, 
The air we breathed was hot with blame ; 
For not with gauged and softened tone 
We made the bondman's cause our own. 

We bore, as Freedom's hope foi'lorn, 
The private hate, the public scorn ; 



Yet held through all the paths we trod 
Our faith in man and trust in God. 

We prayed and hoped ; but still, with awe, 
The coming of the sword we saw ; 
We heard the nearing steps of doom. 
We saw the shade of things to come. 

In grief which they alone can feel 
Who from a mother's wrong appeal, 
With blended lines of fear and hope 
We cast our country's horoscope. 

For still within her house of life 
We marked the lurid sign of strife. 
And, poisoning and imbittering all, 
We saw the star of Wormwood fall. 

Deep as our love for her became 
Our hate of all that wrought her shame, 
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen 
We erred, — we were but mortal men. 

We hoped for peace ; our eyes survey 
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day : 
We prayed for love to loose the chain ; 
'Tis shorn by battle's axe in twain ! 

Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours 
Has mined and heaved the hostile towers ; 
Not by our hands is turned the key 
That sets the sighing captives free. 

A redder sea than Egypt's wave 
Is piled and parted for the slave ; 
A darker cloud moves on in light ; 
A fiercer fire is guide by night ! 

The praise, O Lord ! is Thine alone, 
In Thy own way Thy work is done ! 
Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast, 
To whom be glory, first and last ! 



AFTER THE WAR 

THE PEACE AUTUMN 

Written for the Essex County Agricultural 
Festival, 1865. 

Thank God for rest, where none molest, 
And none can make afraid ; 

For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest 
Beneath the homestead shade 1 



TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS 



347 



Bring pike and gnn, the sword's red 
scourge, 

The negro's broken chains, 
And beat them at the blacksmith's forge 

To ploughshares for our plains. 

Alike henceforth our hills of snow, 
And vales wliere cotton flowers ; 

All streams that flow, all winds that blow, 
Are Freedom's motive-powers. 

Henceforth to Labor's chivalry 

Be knightly honors paid ; 
For nobler than the sword's shall be 

The sickle's accolade. 

Build up an altar to the Lord, 

O grateful hearts of ours ! 
And shape it of the greenest sward 

That ever drank the showers. 

Lay all the bloom of gardens there. 
And there the orchard fruits ; 

Bring golden grain from sun and air. 
From earth her goodly roots. 

There let our banners droop and flow, 

The stars uprise and fall ; 
Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow. 

Let sighing breezes call. 

Their names let hands of horn and tan 
And rough-shod feet applaud, 

Who died to make the slave a man, 
And link with toil reward. 

There let the common heart keep time 

To such an anthem sung 
As never swelled on poet's rhyme, 

Or thi'illed on singer's tongue. 

Song of our burden and relief, 

Of peace and long annoy ; 
The passion of our mighty grief 

And our exceeding joy ! 

A song of praise to Him who filled 

The harvests sown in tears. 
And gave each field a double yield 

To feed our battle-years ! 

A song of faith that trusts the end 

To match the good begun, 
Nor doubts the power of Love to blend 

The hearts of men as one I 



TO 



THE THIRTY-NINTH CON- 
GRESS 



The thirty-ninth congress was that which 
met in ISO.J. after the close of the war, when it 
was charged with the great question of recon- 
struction ; the uppermost subject in men's 
minds was the standing of those who had re- 
cently been in arms against the Union and 
their relations to the freedmen. 

O PEOPLE-CHOSEN ! are ye not 
Likewise the chosen of the Lord, 
To do His will and speak His word ? 

From the loud thunder-storm of war 
Not man alone hath called ye forth. 
But He, the God of all the earth ! 

The torch of vengeance in your hands 
He quenches ; unto Him belongs 
The solemn recompense of wrongs. 

Enough of blood the land has seen, 
And not by cell or gallows-stair 
Shall ye the way of God prepare. 

Say to the pardon-seekers : Keep 

Yoiu- manhood, bend no suppliant knees, 
Nor palter with unworthy pleas. 

Above your voices sounds the wail 
Of starving men ; we shut in vain 
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. 

What words can drowii that bitter cry ? 
What tears wash out the stain of death ? 
What oaths confirm your broken faith ? 

From you alone the guaranty 

Of union, freedom, peace, we claim ; 
We urge no conqueror's terms of shame. 

Alas ! no victor's pride is ours ; 
We bend above our triumphs won 
Like David o'er his rebel son. 

Be men, not beggars. Cancel all 

By one brave, generous action ; trust 
Your better instincts, and be just ! 

Make all men peers before the law. 

Take hands from off the negro's throat, 
Give black and white an equal vote. 



348 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Keep all your forfeit lives and lands, 


The low reveille of their battle-drum 


But give the common law's redress 


Disturbs no morning prayer : 


To labor's utter nakedness. 


With deeper peace in summer noons their 
hum 
Fills all the drowsy air. 


Revive the old heroic will ; 


Be in the right as brave and strong 




As ye have proved yourselves in wrong. 


And Samson's riddle is our own to-day, 




Of sweetness from the strong, 


Defeat shall then be victory, 


Of union, peace, and freedom plucked 


Your loss the wealth of full amends. 


away 


And hate be love, and foes be friends. 


From the rent jaws of wrong. 




From Treason's death we draw a purer 
life, ^ 


Then buried be the dreadful past. 


Its conmaon slain be mourned, and let 


As, from the beast he slew. 


All memories soften to regret. 


A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife 




The old-time athlete drew 1 


Then shall the Union's mother-heart 




Her lost and wandering ones recall. 




Forgiving and restoring all, — 


HOWARD AT ATLANTA 


And Freedom break her marble trance 


Right in the track where Sherman 


Above the Capitolian dome. 


Ploughed his red furrow. 


Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome 


Out of the narrow cabin. 


home ! 


Up from the cellar's burrow, 




Gathered the little black people, 




With freedom newly dowered, 


THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG 


Where, beside their Northern teacher, 




Stood the soldier, Howard. 


In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame. 




So terrible alive. 


He listened and heard the children 


Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, be- 


Of the poor and long-enslaved 


came 


Reading the words of Jesus, 


The wandering wild bees' hive ; 


Singing the songs of David. 


And he who, lone and naked-handed, tore 


Behold ! — the dumb lips speaking. 


Those jaws of death apart, 


The blind eyes seeing ! 


In after time drew forth their honeyed store 


Bones of the Prophet's vision 


To strengthen his strong heart. 


Warmed into being ! 


Dead seemed the legend : but it only slept 


Transformed he saw them passing 


To wake beneath our sky ; 


Their new life's portal ! 


Just on the spot whence ravening Treason 


Almost it seemed the mortal 


crept 


Put on the immortal. 


Back to its lair to die. 


No more with the beasts of burden, 


Bleeding and torn from Freedom's moun- 


No more with stone and clod, 


tain bounds. 


But crowned with glory and honor 


A stained and shattered drum 


In the image of God ! 


Is now the hive where, on their flowery 




rounds, 


There was the human chattel 


The wild bees go and come. 


Its manhood taking ; 




There, in each dark, bronze statue, 


Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel, 


A soul was waking ! 


They wander wide and far, 


The man of many battles. 


Along green hillsides, sown with shot and 


With tears his eyelids pressing, 


shell, 


Stretched over those dusky foreheads 


Through vales once choked with war. 


His one-armed blessing. 



THE JUBILEE SINGERS 



349 



And he said : " Who hears can never 

Fear for or doubt vou ; 
What shall I tell the"' children 

Up North about you ? " 
Then ran round a whisper, a murmur, 

Some answer devising ; 
And a little boy stood up : " General, 

Tell 'em we 're rising ! " 

black boy of Atlanta ! 

But half was spoken : 
The slave's chain and the master's 

Alike are broken. 
The one curse of the races 

Held both in tether : 
They are rising, — all are rising. 

The black and white together ! 

O brave men and fair women ! 

Ill comes of hate and scorning : 
Shall the dark faces only 

Be turned to morning ? — 
Make Time your sole avenger, 

All-healing, all-redressing ; 
Meet Fate half-way, and make it 

A joy and blessing ! 



THE EMANCIPATION GROUP 

Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, pre- 
sented tc the city a duplicate of the Freedman's 
Memorial statue erected in Lincolu iSquare, 
Washington. The group, which stands in Park 
Sqixare, represents the figure of a slave, from 
whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, 
kneeling' in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. 
The gTonp was designed by Thomas Ball, and 
was unveiled December 9, 1879. These verses 
were written for the occasion. 

Amidst thy sacred effigies 

Of old renown give place, 
city, Freedom-loved ! to his 

Whose hand unchained a race. 

Take the worn frame, that rested not 

Save in a martyr's grave ; 
The care-lined face, that none forgot, 

Bent to the kneeling slave. 

Let man be free ! The mighty word 

He spake was not his own ; 
An impulse from the Highest stirred 

These chiselled lips alone. 



The cloudy sign, the fiery guide. 

Along his pathway ran. 
And Nature, through his voice, denied 

The ownership of man. 

We rest in peace where these sad eyes 

Saw peril, strife, and pam ; 
His was the nation's sacrifice. 

And ours the priceless gain. 

O symbol of God's will on earth 

As it is done above ! 
Bear witness to the cost and worth 

Of justice and of love. 

Stand in thy place and testify 

To coming ages long. 
That truth is stronger than a lie, 

And righteousness than wrong. 

THE JUBILEE SINGERS 

A number of students of Fisk University, 
iinder the direction of one of the officers, gave 
a series of concerts in the Northern States, for 
the purpose of establishing the college on a 
firmer financial foundation. Their hymns and 
songs, mostly in a minor key, touched the 
hearts of the people, and were received as pe- 
culiarly expressive of a race delivered from 
bondage. 

Voice of a people suffering long, 
Tlie pathos of their mournful song. 
The sorrow of their night of wrong ! 

Their cry like that which Israel gave, 
A prayer for one to guide and save. 
Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave I 

The stern accord her timbrel lent 
To Miriam's note of triumph sent 
O'er Egypt's sunken armament ! 

The tramp that startled camp and town, 
And shook the walls of slavery down, 
The spectral march of old John Brown ! 

The storm that swept through battle-days, 

The triumph after long delays, 

The bondmen giving God the praise ! 

Voice of a ransomed race, sing on 
Till Freedom's every right is won. 
And slavery's every wrong undone ! 



35° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



GARRISON 

The earliest poem in this division was my 
youthful tribute to the great reformer when 
himself a young- man he was first sounding his 
trumpet in Essex County. I close with the 
verses inscribed to him at the end of his earthly 
career, May '2i, 1879. My poetical service in 
the cause of freedom is thus almost synchro- 
nous with his life of devotion to the same cause. 

The storm and peril overpast, 

The hounding hatred shamed and still, 
Go, soul of freedom ! take at last 

The place which thou alone canst fill. 

Confirm the lesson taught of old — 
Life saved for self is lost, while they 

Who lose it in His service hold 
The lease of God's eternal day. 

Not for thyself, but for the slave 

Thy words of thunder shook the world ; 

No selfish griefs or hatred gave 

The strength wherewith thy bolts were 
hurled. 

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
We heard a tender under song ; 

Thy very wrath from pity grew, 

From love of man thy hate of wrong. 



Now past and present are as one ; 

The life below is life above ; 
Thy mortal years have but begun 

Thy immortality of love. 

With somewhat cf thy lofty faith 
We lay thy outworn garment by, 

Give death but what belongs to death, 
And life the life that cannot die ! 

Not for a soul like thine the calm 
Of selfish ease and joys of sense ; 

But duty, more than crown or palm, 
Its own exceeding recompense. 

Go up and on ! thy day well done. 
Its morning promise well fulfilled, 

Arise to triumphs yet unwon. 

To holier tasks that God has willed. 

Go, leave behind thee all that mars 
The work below of man for man ; 

With the white legions of the stars 
Do service such as angels can. 

Wherever wrong shall right deny 
Or sufPering spirits urge their plea, 

Be thine a voice to smite the lie, 
A baud to set the captive free ! 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN 
TIME 

The Quaker of the olden time ! 

How calm and firm and true, 
Unspotted by its wrong and crime, 

He walked the dark earth through. 
The lust of power, the love of gain, 

The thousand lures of sin 
Around him, had no power to stain 

Tlie purity within. 

With that deep insight which detects 

All great things in the small, 
And knows how each man's life affects 

The spiritual life of all, 
He walked by faith and not by sight, 

By love and not by law ; 
The presence of the wrong or right 

He i-ather felt than saw. 

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, 

That nothing stands alone. 
That whoso gives the motive, makes 

His brother's sin his own. 
And, pausing not for doubtful choice 

Of evils great or small. 
He listened to that inward voice 

Which called away from all. 

O Spirit of that early day, 

So pure and strong and true, 
Be with us in the narrow way 

Our faithful fathers knew. 
Give strength the evil to forsake, 

The cross of Truth to bear. 
And love and reverent fear to make 

Our daily lives a prayer ! 

DEMOCRACY 

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do 
to you, do ye even so to thetn. — Matthew vii. 12. 

Bearer of Freedom's holy light. 
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod, 



The foe of all which pains the sight. 
Or wounds the generous ear of God I 

Beautiful yet thy temples rise. 

Though there profaning gifts are thrown ; 
And fires unkindled of the skies 

Are glaring round thy altar-stone. 

Still sacred, though thy name be breathed 
By those whose hearts thy truth de- 
ride ; 
And garlands, plucked from thee, are 
wreathed 
Around the haughty brows of Pride. 

Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time ! 

The faith in which my father stood, 
Even when the sons of Lust and Crime 

Had stained thy peaceful courts with 
blood ! 

Still to those courts my footsteps turn. 
For through the mists which darken there, 

I see the flame of Freedom burn, — 
The Kebla of the patriot's prayer ! 

The generous feeling, pure and warm, 
Which owns the right of all divine ; 

The pitying heart, the helping arm. 
The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine. 

Beneath thy broad, impartial eye. 

How fade the lines of caste and birth ! 

How equal in their suffering lie 
The groaning multitudes of earth ! 

Still to a stricken brother true, 

Whatever clime hath nurtured him ; 

As stooped to heal the wounded Jew 
The worshipper of Gerizim. 

By misery unrepelled, imawed 

By pomp or power, thou seest a Man 

In prince or peasant, slave or lord, 
Pale priest, or swarthy artisan. 



352 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Through all disguise, form, place, or 
name, 

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin, 
Through poverty and squalid shame, 

Thou lookest on the man within. 

On man, as man, retaining yet, 

Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim, 

The crown upon his forehead set, 
The immortal gift of God to him. 

And there is reverence in thy look ; 

For tliat frail form which mortals wear 
The Spirit of the Holiest took, 

And veiled His perfect brightness there. 

Not from the shallow babbling fount 

Of vain philosophy thou art ; 
He who of old on Syria's Mount 

Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the listen- 
er's heart, 

In holy words which cannot die. 

In thoughts which angels leaned to 
know. 
Proclaimed thy message from on high. 
Thy mission to a world of woe. 

That voice's echo hath not died ! 

From the blue lake of Galilee, 
And Tabor's lonely mountain-side, 

It calls a struggling world to thee. 

Thy name and watchword o'er this land 
I hear in every breeze that stirs. 

And round a thousand altars stand 
Thy banded party worshippers. 

Not to these altars of a day. 

At party's call, my gift I bring ; 

But on thy olden shrine I lay 
A freeman's dearest offering : 

The voiceless utterance of his will, — 
His pledge to Freedom and to Truth, 

That manhood's heart remembers still 
The homage of his generous youth. 



THE GALLOWS 

Written on reading pamphlets published by 
clergymen against the abolition of the gallows. 
[Originally entitled Lines.] 



The suns of eighteen centuries have shone 
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and 
made 
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone, 
And mountain moss, a pillow for His 
head ; 
And He, who wandered with the peasant 
Jew, 
And broke with publicans the bread of 

shame. 
And drank with blessings, in His Father's 
name, 
The water which Samaria's outcast drew, 
Hath now His temples upon every shore, 
Altar and shrine and priest ; and incense 

dhu 
Evermore rising, with low prayer and 
hymn. 
From lips which press the temple's marble 

floor. 
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross 
He bore. 



Yet as of old, when, meekly " doing good," 

He fed a blind and selfish multitude. 

And even the poor companions of His lot 

With their dim earthly vision knew Him 
not. 
How ill are His high teachings under- 
stood ! 

Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest 
At His own altar binds the chain anew ; 

Where He hath bidden to Life's equal feast. 
The starving many wait upon the few ; 

Where He hath spoken Peace, His name 
hath been 

The loudest war-cry of contending men ; 

Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have 
blessed 

The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear 
in rest, 

Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine, 

And crossed its blazon with the holy sign ; 

Yea, in His name who bade the erring live. 

And daily taught His lesson, to forgive ! 
Twisted the cord and edged the murder- 
ous steel ; 

And, with His words of mercy on their 
lips, 

Hung gloating o'er the pincers' burning 
grips, 



THE GALLOWS 



353 



And the grim horror of the straining 
wheel ; 
Fed the slow flame which giuawed the vic- 
tim's limb, 
Who saw before his searing eyeballs swim 
The image of their Christ in cruel zeal, 
Through the black torment-smoke, held 
mockingly to him ! 



Ill 



The blood which mingled with the desert 
sand, 
And beaded with its red and ghastly 
dew 

The vines and olives of the Holy Land ; 
The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew ; 

The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er 

They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear, 

Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed 
cell. 
Where %vith the hymns the ghostly fa- 
thers sung 
Mingled the groans by subtle torture 
wrung. 

Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek 
of hell ! 

The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake 
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed 
flame 

Which Calvin kindled by Greneva's lake ; 

New England's scaffold, and the priestly 
sneer 

Which mocked its victims in that hour of 
fear, 
When guilt itself a human tear might 
claim, — 

Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merci- 
ful One ! 

That Earth's most hateful crimes have in 
Thy name been done ! 



IV 



Thank God ! that I have lived to see the 
time 
When the great truth begins at last to 

find 
An utterance from the deep heart of 
mankind, 
Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime, 
That man is holier than a creed, that all 

Restraint upon him must considt his good, 
Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall, 
And Love look in upon his solitude. 



The beautiful lesson which our Saviour 

taught 
Through long, dark centuries its way hath 

wrought 
Into the common mind and popular thought ; 
And words, to which by Galilee's lake shore 
The humble fishers listened with hushed oar. 
Have found an echo in the general heart, 
And of the public faith become a living part. 



Who shall arrest tliis tendency ? Bring 

back 
The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack ? 
Harden the softening human heart again 
To cold indifference to a brother's pain ? 
Ye most unhappy men ! who, turned away 
From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day, 
Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight 

time. 
What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest 

ye brood. 
O'er those foul altars streaming with warm 

blood. 
Permitted in another age and clime ? 
Why cite that law with which the bigot Jew 
Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knew 
No evil in the Just One ? Wherefore turn 
To the dark, cruel past ? Can ye not learn 
From the pure Teacher's life how mildly 

free 
Is the great Gospel of Humanity ? 
The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no 

more 
Mexitli's altars soak with human gore, 
No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke 
Through the green arches of the Druid's 

oak ; 
And ye of milder faith, with your high claim 
Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest name. 
Will ye become the Druids of our time ! 
Set up your scaffold-altars in our land. 
And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime. 
Urge to its loathsome work the hang- 
man's hand ? 
Beware, lest human nature, roused at last. 
From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance 

cast. 
And, sick to loathing of your cry for 

blood. 
Rank ye with those who led their victims 

round 
The Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound. 
Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan 

brotherhood ! 



354 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



SEED-TIME AND HARVEST 

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie 
Beneath a coldly dropping sky, 
Yet chill with winter's melted snow, 
The husbandman goes forth to sow, 

Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast 
The ventures of thy seed we cast, 
And trust to warmer sun and rain 
To swell the germs and fill the grain. 

Who calls thy glorious service hard ? 
VVlio deems it not its own reward ? 
Who, for its trials, counts it less 
A cause of praise and thankfulness ? 

It may not be our lot to Avield 
The sickle in the ripened field ; 
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves, 
The reaper's song among the sheaves. 

Yet where our duty's task is wrought 
In unison with God's great thought, 
The near and future blend in one. 
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done ! 

And ours the grateful service whence 
Comes day by day the recompense ; 
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, 
The fountain and the noonday shade. 

And were this life the utmost span. 
The only end and aim of man, 
Better the toil of fields like these 
Than waking dream and slothful ease. 

But life, though falling like our grain, 
Like that revives and springs again ; 
And, early called, how blest are they 
Who wait in heaven their harvest-day ! 

TO THE REFORMERS OF ENG- 
LAND 

This poem was addressed to those who like 
Richard Cobden and John Bright were seeking 
the reform of political evils in Great Britain by 
peaceful and Christian means. It will be re- 
membered that the Anti-Corn-Law I^eague 
was in the midst of its labors at this time. 

God bless ye, brothers ! in the fight 
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail, 



For better is your sense of right 
Than king-craft's triple mail. 

Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban, 
More mighty is your simplest word ; 

The free heart of an honest man 
Than crosier or the sword. 

Go, let your blinded Church rehearse 
The lesson it has learned so well ; 

It moves not with its prayer or curse 
The gates of heaven or hell. 

Let the State scaffold rise again ; 

Did Freedom die when Russell died ? 
Forget ye how the blood of Vane 

From earth's green bosom cried ? 

The great hearts of your olden time 
Are beating with you, full and strong ; 

All holy memories and sublime 
And glorious round ye throng. 

The bluff, bold men of Runnymede 
Are with ye still in times like these ; 

The shades of England's mighty dead, 
Your cloud of witnesses ! 

The truths ye urge are borne abroad 
By every wind and every tide ; 

The voice of Nature and of God 
Speaks out upon your side. 

The weapons which your hands have found 
Are those which Heaven itself has 
wrought. 
Light, Truth, and Love ; your battle- 
ground 
The free, broad field of Thought. 

No partial, selfish purpose breaks 
The simple beauty of your plan. 

Nor lie from throne or altar shakes 
Your steady faith in man. 

The languid pulse of England starts 

And bounds beneath your words of 
power, 

The beating of her million hearts 
Is with you at this hour ! 

O ye who, with undoubting eyes, 

Through present cloud and gathering 
storm, 



THE HUMAN SACRIFICE 



355 



Behold the span of Freedom's skies, 
And sunshine soft and warm ; 

Press bravely onward ! not in vain 
Your generous trust in Imman-kind ; 

Tlie good which bloodshed could not gain 
Your peaceful zeal shall find. 

Press on ! the triumpli shall be won 
Of common rights and equal laws, 

The glorious dream of Harrington, 
And Sidney's good old cause. 

Blessing the cotter and the crown, 
Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup ; 

And, plucking not the highest down. 
Lifting the lowest up. 

Press on ! and we who may not share 
The toil or glory of your fight 

May ask, at least, in earnest prayer, 
God's blessing on the right ! 



THE HUMAN SACRIFICE 

Some leading sectarian papers had lately 
published the letter of a clergyman, giving 
an account of his attendance upon a criminal 
(who had committed murder during a fit of 
intoxication), at the time of bis execution, in 
western New York. The writer describes the 
agony of the wretched being, his abortive at- 
tempts at prayer, his appeal for life, his fear 
of a violent death ; and, after declaring his 
belief that the poor victim died without hope 
of salvation, concludes with a warm eulogy 
upon the gallows, being more than ever con- 
vinced of its utility by the awful dread and 
horror which it inspired. 

I 

Far from his close and noisome cell, 

By grassy lane and sunny stream. 
Blown clover field and strawberry dell. 
And green and meadow freshness, fell 

Tlie footsteps of his dream. 
Again from careless feet the dew 

Of summer's misty morn he shook ; 
Again with merry heart he threw 

His light line in the rippling brook. 
Back crowded all his school-day joys ; 

He urged the ball and quoit again. 
And heard the shout of laughing boys 

Come ringing down the walnut glen. 



Again he felt the western breeze. 

With scent of flowers and crisping hay ; 
And down again through wind-stirred trees 

He saw the quivering sunlight play. 
An angel in home's vine-hung door. 
He saw his sister smile once more ; 
Once more the truant's brown-locked head 
Upon his mother's knees was laid, 
And sweetly lulled to slumber there. 
With evening's holy hymn and prayer ! 



He woke. At once on heart and brain 
The present Terror rushed again ; 
Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain ! 
He woke, to hear the church-tower tell 
Time's footfall on the conscious bell. 
And, shuddering, feel that clanging din 
His life's last hour had ushered in ; 
To see within his jjrison-yard. 
Through the small window, iron barred, 
The gallows shadow rising dim 
Between the sunrise heaven and him ; 
A horror in God's blessed air ; 

A blackness in his morning light ; 
Like some foul devil-altar there 

Built up by demon hands at night. 

And, maddened by that evil sjght. 
Dark, horrible, confused, and strange, 
A chaos of wild, weltering change, 
All power of check and guidance gone, 
Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on. 
In vain he strove to breathe a prayer, 

In vain he turned the Holy Book, 
He only heard the gallows-stair 

Creak as the wind its timbers shook. 
No dream for hini of sin forgiven, 

While still that baleful spectre stood. 

With its hoarse murmur, " Blood for 
Blood!" 
Between him and the pitying Heaven ! 



Low on his dungeon floor he knelt. 

And smote his breast, and on his chain, 
Whose iron clasp he always felt. 

His hot tears fell like rain ; 
And near him, with the cold, calm look 
And tone of one whose formal part, 
Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart, 
Is measured out by rule and book. 
With placid lip and tranquil blood. 
The hangman's ghostly ally stood, 
Blessing with solemn text and word 
The gallows-drop and strangling cord ; 



356 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Lending the sacred Gospel's awe 
And sanction to the crime of Law. 



He saw the victim's tortured brow, 

The sweat of anguish starting there, 
The record of a nameless woe 
In the dim eye's imploring stare, 
Seen hideous through the long, damp 
hair, — 
Fingers of ghastly skin and bone 
Working and writhing on the stone ! 
And heard, by mortal terror wrung 
From heaving breast and stiffened tongue, 
The choking sob and low hoarse prayer ; 
As o'er his half-crazed fancy came 
A vision of the eternal flame. 
Its smoking cloud of agonies. 
Its demon worm that never dies, 
The everlasting rise and fall 
Of fire-waves round the infernal wall ; 
While high above that dark red flood, 
Black, giant-like, the gallows stood ; 
Two busy fiends attending there : 
One with cold mocking rite and prayer, 
The other with impatient grasp, 
Tightenmg the death -rope's strangling 
clasp. 



The unfelt rite at length was done. 

The prayer unheard at length was said, 
An hour had passed : the noonday sun 

Smote on the features of the dead ! 
And he who stood the doomed beside, 
Calm ganger of the swelling tide 
Of mortal agony and fear, 
Heeding with curious eye and ear 
Whate'er revealed the keen excess 
Of man's extremest wretchedness : 
And who in that dark anguish saw 

An earnest of the victim's fate, 
The vengeful terrors of God's law, 

The kindlings of Eternal hate. 
The first drops of that fiery rain 
Which beats the dark red realm of pain. 
Did he uplift his earnest cries 

Against the crime of Law, which gave 

His brother to that fearful grave. 
Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies. 

And Faith's white blossoms never wave 
To the soft breath of Memory's sighs ; 
Which sent a spirit marred and stained. 
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned, 
In madness and in blindness stark, 



Into the silent, unknown dark ? 

No, from the wild and shrinking dread, 

With which he saw the victim led 

Beneath the dark veil which divides 
Ever the living from the dead. 

And Nature's solemn secret hides. 
The man of prayer can only draw 
New reasons for his bloody law ; 
New faith in staying Murder's hand 
By murder at that Law's command ; 
New reverence for the gallows-rope. 
As human nature's latest hope ; 
Last relic of the good old time, 
When Power found license for its crime, 
And held a writhing world in check 
By that fell cord about its neck ; 
Stifled Sedition's rising shout. 
Choked the young breath of Freedom out. 
And timely checked the words which 

sprung 
From Heresy's forbidden tongue ; 
While in its noose of terror bound, 
The Church its cherished union foimd. 
Conforming, on the Moslem plan. 
The motley-colored mind of man, 
Not by the Koran and the Sword, 
But by the Bible and the Cord ! 

VI 

O Thou ! at whose rebuke the grave 
Back to warm life its sleeper gave, 
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance 
The cold and changed countenance 
Broke the still horror of its trance. 
And, waking, saw with joy above, 
A brotlier's face of tenderest love ; 
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame, 
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came, 
And from Thy very garment's hem 
Drew life and healing unto them, 
The burden of Thy holy faith 
Was love and life, not hate and death ; 
Man's demon ministers of pain, 

The fiends of his revenge, were sent 

From thy pure Gospel's element 
To their dark home again. 
Thy name is Love ! What, then, is he. 

Who in that name the gallows rears. 
An awful altar built to Thee, 

With sacrifice of blood and tears ? 
Oh, once again Thy healing lay 

On the blind eyes which knew Thee 
not. 
And let the light of Thy pure day 

Melt in upon his darkened thought. 



THE SHOEMAKERS 



357 



Soften his hard, cold heart, and show 
The power which in forbearance lies, 

And let him feel that mercy now 
Is better than old sacritice ! 

VII 

As on the White Sea's charmed shore. 

The Parsee sees his holy hill 
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er, 
Yet knows beneath them, evermore. 

The low, pale fire is quivering still ; 
So, underneath its clouds of sin, 

The heart of man retaineth yet 
Gleams of its holy origin ; 

And half-quenched stars that never set, 
Dim colors of its faded bow. 

And early beauty, linger there, 
And o'er its wasted desert blow 

Faint breathings of its morning air. 
Oh, never yet upon the scroll 
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul. 

Hath Heaven inscribed " Despair ! " 
Cast not the clouded gem away, 
Quench not the dim but living ray, — 

My brother man, Beware ! 
With that deep voice which from the skies 
Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice, 

God's angel cries. Forbear ! 



SONGS OF LABOR 

DEDICATION 

Prefixed to the volume of which the group 
of six poems following this prelude constituted 
the first portion. 

I WOULD the gift I offer here 

Might graces from thy favor take. 
And, seen through Friendship's atmos- 
phere, 
On softened lines and coloring, wear 
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy 
sake. 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain : 

But what I have I give to thee. 
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's 

plain. 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
Calls from the westering slope of life's 
autumnal lea. 

Above the fallen groves of green. 

Where youth's enchanted forest stood, 



Dry root and mossed trunk between, 
A sober after-growth is seen. 
As springs the pine where falls the gay* 
leafed maple wood ! 

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 

Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree ; 
And through the bleak and wintry day 
It keeps its steady gi-een alway, — 
So, even my after-thoughts may have a 
charm for thee. 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 

And beauty is its own excuse ; 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead. 
And the rough ore must find its honors in 
its use. 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom and tasselled maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways, 
The unsung beauty hid life's common 
things below. 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 

Above his forge or plough, may gain 
A manlier spirit of content. 
And feel that life is wisest spent 
Where the strong working hand makes 
strong the working brain. 

The doom which to the guilty pair 
Without the walls of Eden came, 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
The burden of old crime, or mark of pri- 
mal shame. 

A blessing now, a curse no more ; 

Since He, whose name we breathe 
with awe. 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
A poor man toiling with the poor. 
In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same 
law. 



THE SHOEMAKERS 

Ho ! workers of the old time styled 
The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 

Young brothers of the ancient guild, 
Stand forth once more together 1 



358 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Call out again your long array, 

In the olden merry manner ! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out your blazoned banner ! 

Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 

How falls the polished hammer ! 
Rap, rap ! the measured soimd has grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 

The glossy vamp around it. 
And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 

Whose gentle fingers bound it 1 

For you, along the Spanish main 

A hundred keels are ploughing ; 
For yon, the Indian on the plain 

His lasso-coil is throwing ; 
For you, deep glens with hemlock dark 

The woodman's fire is lighting ; 
For you, upon the oak's gray bark, 

The woodman's axe is smiting. 

For you, from Carolina's pine 

The rosin-gum is stealing ; 
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 

Her silken skein is reeling ; 
For you, the dizzy goatherd roams 

His rugged Alpine ledges ; 
For you, round all her shepherd homes, 

Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, by day or night, 

On moated mound or heather. 
Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men together ; 
Where the free burghers from the wall 

Defied the mail-clad master, 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 

No craftsmen rallied faster. 

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, 

Ye heed no idle scorner ; 
Free hands and hearts are still your pride. 

And duty done your honor. 
Ye dare to trust, for honest fame. 

The jury Time empanels, 
And leave to truth each noble name 

Which glorifies your annals. 

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 
In strong and hearty German ; 

And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit, 
And patriot fame of Sherman ; 

Still from his book, a mystic seer, 



The soul of Behmen teaches. 
And England's priestcraft shakes to hear 
Of Fox's leathern breeches. 

The foot is yours ; where'er it falls. 

It treads your well- wrought leather, 
On earthen floor, in marble halls 

On carpet, or on heather. 
Still there the sweetest charm is found 

Of matron grace or vestal's, 
As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 

Among the old celestials ! 

Rap, rap ! — your stout and bluff brogan, 

With footsteps slow and weary. 
May wander where the sky's blue span 

Sluits down upon tlie prairie. 
On Beauty's foot your slippers glance, 

By Saratoga's fountains. 
Or twinkle down the summer dance 

Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand, 

The brown earth to the tiller's. 
The shoe in yours shall wealth command, 

Like fairy Cinderella's ! 
As they who shunned the household maid 

Beheld the crown upon her, 
So all shall see your toil repaid 

With hearth and home and honor. 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed, 

In water cool and brimming, — 
" All honor to the good old Craft, 

Its merry men and women ! " 
Call out again your long array, 

In the old time's pleasant manner : 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out his blazoned banner ! 



THE FISHERMEN 

Hurrah ! the seaward breezes 

Sweep down tlie bay amain ; 
Heave up, my lads, the anchor I 

Run up the sail again ! 
Leave to the lubber landsmen 

The rail-car and the steed ; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us, 

The breath of heaven shall speed. 

From the hill-top looks the steeple. 
And the lighthouse from the sand 



THE LUMBERMEN 



359 



And the scattered piues are waving 


And our lines wind stiff and slowly 


Their farewell from tiie land. 


From ofE the frozen reels ; 


One glance, my lads, behind us. 


Though the fog be dark around us. 


For the homes we leave one sigh. 


And the storm blow high and loud, 


Ere we take the change and chances 


We will whistle down the wild wind, 


Of the ocean and the sky. 


And laugh beneath the cloud ! 


Now, brothers, for the icebergs 


In the darkness as in daylight, 


Of frozen Labrador, 


On the water as on land. 


Floating spectral in the moonshine, 


God's eye is looking on us. 


Along the low, black shore ! 


And beneath us is His hand ! 


Where like snow the gannet's feathers 


Death will find us soon or later, 


On Brador's rocks are shed. 


On the deck or in the cot ; 


And the noisy murr are flying. 


And we cannot meet him better 


Like black scuds, overhead ; 


Than in working out our lot. 


Where in mist the rock is hiding, 


Hurrah ! hurrah ! the west-wind 


And the sharp reef lurks below. 


Comes freshening down the bay. 


And the white squall smites in summer, 


The rising sails are filling ; 


And the autumn tempests blow ; 


Give way, my lads, give way ! 


Where, through gray and rolling vapor, 


Leave the coward landsman clinging 


From evening unto morn. 


To the dull earth, like a weed ; 


A thousand boats are hailing. 


The stars of heaven shall guide us, 


Horn answering unto horn. 


The breath of heaven shall speed ! 


Hurrah ! for the Red Island, 




With the white cross on its crown ! 


THE LUMBERMEN 


Hurrah ! for Meccatina, 




And its mountains bare and brown ! 


Wildly round our woodland quarters 


Where the Caribou's tall antlers 


Sad-voiced Autumn grieves ; 


O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss, 


Thickly down these swelling waters 


And the footstep of the Mickmack 


Float his fallen leaves. 


Has no sound upon the moss. 


Through the tall and naked timber, 




Column-like and old, 


There we '11 drop our lines, and gather 


Gleam the sunsets of November, 


Old Ocean's treasures in. 


From their skies of gold. 


Where'er the mottled mackerel 




Turns up a steel-dark fin. 


O'er us, to the southland heading, 


The sea 's our field of harvest, 


Screams the gray wild-goose ; 


Its scaly tribes our grain ; 


On the night-frost sounds the treading 


We '11 reap the teeming waters 


Of the brindled moose. 


As at home they reap the plain ! 


Noiseless creeping, while we 're sleeping. 




Frost his task-work plies ; 


Our wet hands spread the carpet. 


Soon, his icy bridges heaping. 


And light the hearth of home ; 


Shall our log-piles rise. 


From our fish, as in the old time, 




The silver coin shall come. 


When, with sounds of smothered thunder, 


As the demon iied the chamber 


On some night of rain. 


Where the fish of Tobit laj, 


Lake and river break asunder 


So ours from all our dwellings 


Winter's weakened chain, 


Shall frighten Want away. 


Down the wild March flood shall bear them 




To the saw-mill's wheel, 


Though the mist upon our jackets 


Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them 


In the bitter air congeals, 


With his teeth of steel. 



360 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Be it starlight, be it moonlight, 

111 these vales below, 
When the earliest beams of sunlight 

Streak the mountain's snow. 
Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, 

To our hurrying feet, 
And the forest echoes clearly 

All our blows repeat. 

Where the crystal Ambijejis 

Stretches broad and clear, 
And Millnoket's pine-black ridges 

Hide the browsing deer : 
Where, through lakes and wide morasses, 

Or through rocky walls. 
Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 

White with foamy falls ; 

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given 

Of Katahdin's sides, — 
Rock and forest piled to heaven, 

Toru and ploughed by slides ! 
Far below, the Indian trapping. 

In the sunshine warm ; 
Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 

Half the peak in storm ! 

Where are mossy carpets better 

Than the Persian weaves, 
And than Eastern perfumes sweeter 

Seem the fading leaves ; 
And a music wild and solemn, 

From the pine-tree's height. 
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume 

On the wind of night ; 

Make we here our camp of winter ; 

And, through sleet and snow, 
Pitchy knot and beecheu splinter 

On our hearth shall glow. 
Here, with mirth to lighten duty, 

We shall lack alone 
Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, 

Childhood's lisping tone. 

But their hearth is brighter burning 

For our toil to-day ; 
And the welcome of returning 

Shall our loss repay. 
When, like seamen from the waters. 

From the woods we come. 
Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters. 

Angels of our home ! 



Not for us the measured ringing 

From the village spire. 
Not for us the Sabbath singing 

Of the sweet-voiced choir ; 
Ours the old, majestic temple, 

Where God's brightness shines 
Down the dome so grand and ample, 

Propped by lofty pines ! 

Through each branch-enwoven skylight, 

Speaks He in the breeze. 
As of old beneath the twilight 

Of lost Eden's trees ! 
For His ear, the inward feeling 

Needs no outward tongue ; 
He can see the spirit kneeling 

While the axe is swung. 

Heeding truth alone, and turning 

From the false and dim, 
Lamp of toil or altar burning 

Are alike to Him. 
Strike then, comrades ! Trade is waiting 

On our rugged toil ; 
Far ships waiting for the freighting 

Of our woodland spoil ! 

Ships whose traffic links these highlands, 

Bleak and cold, of ours. 
With the citron-planted islands 

Of a clime of flowers ; 
To our frosts the tribute bringing 

Of eternal heats ; 
In our lap of winter flinging 

Tropic fruits and sweets. 

Cheerly, on the axe of labor. 

Let the sunbeams dance. 
Better than the flash of sabre 

Or the gleam of lance ! 
Strike ! With every blow is given 

Freer sun and sky. 
And the long-hid earth to heaven 

Looks, with wondering eye ! 

Loud behind us grow the murmurs 

Of the age to come ; 
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, 

Bearing harvest home ! 
Here her virgin lap with treasures 

Shall the green earth fill ; 
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears 

Crown each beechen hill. 



THE SHIP- 


BUILDERS 361 


Keep who will the city's alleys, 


For us the century-circled oak 


Take the smooth-shorn plain ; 


Falls crashing down his hill. 


Give to us the cedarn valleys, 




Rocks and liills of Maine ! 


Up ! up ! in nobler toil than ours 


In our North-laud, wild and woody, 


No craftsmen bear a part : 


Let us still have part : 


We make of Nature's giant powers 


Rugs^ed nurse and mother sturdy, 


The slaves of human Art. 


Hold us to thy heart ! 


Lay rib to rib and beam to beam. 




And drive the treenails free ; 


Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer 


Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam 


For thy breatli of snow ; 


Shall tempt the searching sea ! 


And our tread is all the firmer 




For thy rocks below. 


Where'er the keel of our good ship 


Freedom, hand in hand with labor, 


The sea's rough field shall plough ; 


Walketh strong and brave ; 


Where'er her tossing spars shall drip 


On the forehead of his neighbor 


With salt-spray caught below ; 


No man writeth Slave ! 


That ship must heed her master's beck. 




Her helm obey his hand. 


Lo, the day breaks ! old Katahdin's 


And seamen tread her reeling deck 


Pine-trees show its fires. 


As if they trod the land. 


While from these dim forest gardens 




Rise their blackened spires. 


Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak 


Up, my comrades ! up and doing ! 


Of Northern ice may peel ; 


Man'hood's rugged play 


The suukeu rock and coral peak 


Still renewing, bravely hewing 


May grate along her keel ; 


Through the world our way ! 


And know we well the painted shell 




We give to wind and wave. 




Must float, the sailor's citadel, 


THE SHIP-BUILDERS 


Or sink, the sailor's grave ! 


The sky is ruddy in the east, 


Ho ! strike away the bars and blocks. 


The earth is gray below, 


And set the good ship free ! 


And, spectral in the river-mist, 


Why lingers on these dusty rocks 


The ship's white timbers show. 


The young bride of tiie sea ? 


Then let the soimds of measured stroke 


Look ! how she moves adown the grooves, 


And grating saw begin ; 


In graceful beauty now ! 


The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, 


How lowly on the breast she loves 


The mallet to the pin ! 


Sinks down her virgin prow ! 


Hark ! roars the bellows, blast on blast, 


God bless her ! wheresoe'er the breeze 


The sooty smithy jars. 


Her snowy wing shall fan. 
Aside the frozen Hebrides, 


And fire-sparks, rising far and fast, 


Are fading with the stars. 


Or sultry Hindostan ! 


All day for us the smith shall stand 


Where'er, in mart or on the main. 


Beside that flashing forge ; 


With peaceful flag unfurled. 


All day for us his heavy hand 


She helps to wind the silken chain 


The groaning anvil scourge. 


Of commerce round the world ! 


From far-off hills, the panting team 


Speed on the ship ! But let her bear 


For us is toiling near ; 


No merchandise of sin, 


For us the raftsmen down the stream 


No groaning cargo of despair 


Their island barges steer. 


Her roomy hold within ; 


Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke 


No Lethean drug for Eastern lands, 


In forests old and still; 


Nor poison-draught for ours ; 



362 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



But honest fruits of toiling hands 
And Nature's sun and showers. 

Be hers the Prairie's golden grain, 

The Desert's golden sand, 
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain, 

The spice of Morning-land ! 
Her pathway on the open main 

May blessings follow free, 
And glad hearts welcome back again 

Her white sails from the sea ! 



THE DROVERS 

Through heat and cold, and shower and 
Sim, 

Still onward cheerly driving ! 
There 's life alone in duty done. 

And rest alone in striving. 
But see ! the day is closing cool. 

The woods are dim before us ; 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
And through you elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
The landlord beckons from his door. 

His beechen fii-e is glowing ; 
These ample barns, with feed in store. 

Are filled to overflowing. 

From many a valley frowned across 

By brows of rugged mountains ; 
From hillsides where, through spongy 
moss. 

Gush out the river fountains ; 
From quiet farm-fields, green and low, 

And bright with blooming clover ; 
From vales of corn the wandering crow 

No richer hovers over, — 

Day after day our way has been 

O'er many a hill and hollow ; 
By lake and stream, by wood and glen, 

Our stately drove we follow. 
Through dust-clouds rising thick and dun. 

As smoke of battle o'er us, 
Their white horns glisten in the sun, 

Like plumes and crests before us. 

We see them slowly climb the hill, 
As slow behind it sinking ; 



Or, thronging close, from roadside rill, 

Or sunny lakelet, drinking. 
Now crowding in the narrow road. 

In thick and struggling masses, 
They glare upon the teamster's load, 

Or rattling coach that passes. 

Anon, with toss of horn and tail, 

And paw of hoof, and bellow, 
They leap some farmer's broken pale, 

O'er meadow-close or fallow. 
Forth comes the startled goodnian ; forth 

Wife, children, house-dog, sally. 
Till once more on tlieir dusty path 

The baffled truants rally. 

We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown. 

Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony. 
Like those who grind their noses down 

On pastures bare and stony, — 
Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs. 

And cows too lean for shadows. 
Disputing feebly with the frogs 

The crop of saw-grass meadows ! 

In our good drove, so sleek and fair, 

No bones of leanness rattle ; 
No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there. 

Or Pharaoh's evil cattle. 
Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand 

That fed him unrepining ; 
The fatness of a goodly land 

In each dun hide is shining. 

We 've sought them where, in warmest 
nooks. 

The freshest feed is growing. 
By sweetest springs and clearest brooks 

Through honeysuckle flowing ; 
Wherever hillsides, sloping south, 

Are bright with early grasses, 
Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth, 

The mountain streamlet passes. 

But now the day is closing cool. 

The woods are dim before us, 
Tlie white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 
The cricket to the frog's bassoon 

His shrillest time is keeping ; 
The sickle of yon setting moon 

The meadow-mist is reaping. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 
Our footsore beasts are weary, 



THE HUSKERS 



363 



And through you elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
To-morrow, eastwju'd with our charge 

"We '11 go to meet the dawning, 
Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge 

Have seen the sun of morning. 

When snow-flakes o'er tlie frozen earth, 

Instead of birds, are Hitting ; 
When children throng the glowing hearth, 

And quiet wives are knitting ; 
While in the fire-light strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The ears of home shall listen. 

By many a Northern lake and hill, 

From many a mountain pasture. 
Shall Fancy play the Drover still. 

And speed the long night faster. 
Then let us on, through shower and sim, 

And heat and cold, be driving ; 
There's life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving. 



THE HUSKERS 

It was late in mild October, and the long 

autumnal rain 
Had left the summer harvest - fields all 

green with grass again ; 
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all 

the woodlands gay 
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the 

meadow-flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the 

smi rose broad and red. 
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened 

as he sped ; 
Yet even his noontide glory fell chastened 

and subdued. 
On the cornfields and the orchards and 

softly pictured wood. 

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping 

to the night, 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with 

yellow light ; 
Slanting through the painted beeches, he 

glorified the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay 

brighter, greener still. 



And shouting boys in woodland haunts 
caught glimpses of that sky, 

Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and 
laughed, they kiiew not why ; 

Aiid school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, 
beside the meadow brooks. 

Mingled the glow of autumn with the sun- 
shine of sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the 
patient weathercocks ; 

But even the birches ou the hill stood mo- 
tionless as rocks. 

No sound was in the woodlands, save the 
squirrel's dropping shell, 

And the yellow leaves amoug the boughs, 
low rustling as they fell. 

The summer grains were harvested ; the 

stubble-fields lay dry. 
Where June winds rolled, in light and 

shade, the pale green waves of 

rye ; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys 

fringed with wood, 
Uugathered, bleaching in the sun, the 

heavy corn crop stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, 

through husks that, dry and sere, 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone 

out the yellow ear ; 
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many 

a verdant fold. 
And glistened in the slanting light the 

pumpkin's sphere of gold. 

There wrought the busy harvesters ; and 

many a creaking wain 
Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load 

of husk and grain ; 
Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun 

sank down, at last. 
And like a merry guest's farewell, the day 

in brightness passed. 

And lo ! as through the western pines, on 
meadow, stream, and pond. 

Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all 
afire beyond. 

Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder 
glory shone, 

And the sunset and the moonrise were min- 
gled into one ! 



364 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



As thus into the quiet night the twilight 

lapsed away, 
And deeper in the brightening moon the 

tranquil shadows lay ; 
From many a brown old farm-house, and 

hamlet without name, 
Their milking and their home-tasks done, 

the merry buskers came. 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from 

pitchforks in the mow, 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the 

pleasant scene below ; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the 

golden ears before. 
And laughing eyes and busy hands and 

bi-own cheeks glimmering o'er. 

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of 

look and heart. 
Talking their old times over, the old men 

sat apart ; 
While up and down the unhusked pile, 

or nestling in its shade. 
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, 

the happy children played. 

Urged by the good host's daughter, a 

maiden young and fair, 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and 

pride of soft brown hair. 
The master of the village school, sleek of 

hair and smooth of tongue. 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a 

husking-ballad sung. 

THE CORN-SONG 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 

The apple from the pine. 
The orange fiom its glossy green, 

The cluster from the vine ; 

We better love the hardy gift 

Our rugged vales bestow, 
To cheer us when the storm shall drift 

Our harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers 
Our ploughs their furrows made, 



While on the hills the sun and showers 
Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 

Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 

The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 
Its leaves grew green and fair, 

And waved in hot midsummer's noon 
Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 

Its harvest-time has come. 
We pluck away the frosted leaves. 

And bear the treasure home. 

There, when the snows about us drift, 

And winter winds are cold. 
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift. 

And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board ; 
Give us the bowl of samp and milk. 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth 

Sends up its smoky curls. 
Who will not thank the kindly earth. 

And bless our farmer girls ! 

Then shame on all the proud and vain, 

Whose folly laughs to scorn 
The blessing of our hardy grain, 

Our wealth of golden corn ! 

Let earth withhold her goodly root, 

Let mildew blight the rye. 
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit. 

The wheat-field to the fly : 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 
Still let us, for his golden corn. 

Send up our thanks to God ! 



THE REFORMER 

All grim and soiled and brown with tan, 

I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, 
Smiting the godless shrines of man 
Along his path. 



THE REFORMER 



sss 



The Church, beneath her trembling dome, 

Essayed in vain lier ghostly charm : 
Wealth shook within his gilded home 
With strange alarm. 

Fraud from his secret chambers fled 

Before the sunlight bursting in : 

Sloth drew her pillow o'er Iier head 

To drown the din. 

" Spare," Art implored, " yon holy pile ; 

That grand, old, time-worn turret spare ; " 
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle, 
Cried out, " Forbear ! " 

Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind. 
Groped for his old accustomed stone, 
Leaned on his staff, and wept to find 
His seat o'erthrown. 

Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes, 

O'erhung with paly locks of gold, — 

" Why smite," he asked in sad surprise, 

"The fair, the old?" 

Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke. 

Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam ; 
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke. 
As from a dream. 

I looked : aside the dust-cloud rolled. 

The Waster seemed the Builder too ; 
Upspringing from tlie ruined Old 
I saw the New. 

'T was but the ruin of the bad, — 

The wasting of the wrong and ill ; 
Whate'er of good the old time had 
Was living still. 

Calm grew the brows of him I feared ; 

The frown which awed me passed away, 
And left behind a smile which cheered 
Like breaking day. 

The grain grew green on battle-plains, 
O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the 
cow ; 
The slave stood forging from his chains 
The spade and plough. 

"Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay 

And cottage windows, flower-entwined, 
Looked out upon the peaceful bay 
And hills behind. 



Through vine-wreathed cups with wine once 
red. 
The lights on brimming crystal fell. 
Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head 
And mossy well. 

Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent 
hope. 
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams 
strayed. 
And with the idle gallows-rope 

The young child played. 

Where the doomed victim in his cell 
Had counted o'er the weary hours. 
Glad school-girls, answering to the bell, 
Came crowned with flowers. 

Grown wiser for the lesson given, 

I fear no longer, for I know 
That, where the share is deepest driven, 
The best fruits grow. 

The outworn rite, the old abuse, 

The pious fraud transparent grown. 
The good held captive in the use 
Of wrong alone, — 

These wait their doom, from that great law 
Which makes the past time serve to-day ; 
And fresher life the world shall draw 
From their decay. 

Oh, backward-looking son of time ! 

The new is old, the old is new, 
The cycle of a change sublime 

Still sweeping through. 

So wisely taught the Indian seer ; 

Destroying Seva, forming Brahm, 
Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear, 
Are one, the same. 

Idly as thou, in that old day 

Thou mouruest, did thy sire repine ; 
So, in his time, thy child grown gray 
Shall sigh for thine. 

But life shall on and upward go ; 

Th' eternal step of Progress beats 

To that great anthem, calm and slow, 

Which God repeats. 

Take heart ! the Waster builds again, — 
A charmed life old Goodness hath : 



366 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



The tares may perish, but the grain 
Is not for death. 

God works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night : 
Wake thou and watch ! the world is gray 
With morning light ! 



THE PEACE CONVENTION AT 
BRUSSELS 

Still in thy streets, O Paris ! doth the stain 
Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain ; 
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins 

through, 
And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew, 
When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread, 
At a crowned murderer's beck of license, 

fed 
The yawning trenches with her noble dead ; 
Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately 

halls 
The shell goes crashing and the red shot 

falls. 
And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's 

side. 
The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman 

ride ; 
Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow 
Melts round the cornfields and the vines 

below. 
The Sikli's hot cannon, answering ball for 

ball. 
Flames in the breach of Moultan's shattered 

wall ; 
On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the slain, 
And Sutlej paints with blood its banks again. 

"What folly, then," the faithless critic 
cries. 

With sneering lip, and wise world-knowing 
eyes, 

" While fort to fort, and post to post, repeat 

The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's 
beat. 

And round the green earth, to the church- 
bell's chime, 

The morning drum-roll of the camp keeps 
time, 

To dream of peace amidst a world in arms. 

Of swords to ploughshares changed by 
Scriptural charms. 

Of nations, drunken with the wine of blood, 



Staggering to take the Pledge of Brother- 
hood, 
Like tipplers answering Father Mathew's 

call ; 
The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap Gaul, 
The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with life, 
The Yankee swaggering with his bowie- 
knife, 
The Russ, from banquets with the vulture 

shared, 
The blood stiU dripping from his amber 

beard, 
Quitting their mad Berserker dance to hear 
The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer ; 
Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings, 
Where men for dice each titled gambler 

flings, 
To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames, 
For tea and gossip, like old country dames ! 
No ! let the cravens plead the weakling's 

cant, 
Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant. 
Let Sturge preach peace to democratic 

throngs, 
And Burritt, stammering through his hun- 
dred tongues, 
Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er, 
Timed to the pauses of the battery's roar ; 
Check Ban or Kaiser with the barricade 
Of ' Olive-leaves ' and Resolutions made, 
Spike guns with pointed Scripture-texts, 

and hope 
To capsize navies with a windy trope ; 
Still shall the glory and the pomp of War 
Along their train the shouting millions 

draw ; 
Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave 
His cap shall doff, and Beauty's kerchief 

wave ; 
Still shall the bard to Valor tune his song, 
Still Hero-worship kneel before the Strong ; 
Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned divine, 
O'er his third bottle of suggestive wine. 
To plumed and sworded auditors, shall 

prove 
Their trade accordant with the Law of 

Love ; 
And Church for State, and State for 

Church, shall fight. 
And both agree, that Might alone is 

Right ! " 
Despite of sneers like these, O faithful few, 
Who dare to hold God's word and witness j 
true, I 



THE PRISONER FOR DEBT 



367 



Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our evil 

time. 
And o'er the present wilderness of crime 
Sees the calm future, with its robes of 

green, 
Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft 

streams between, — 
Still keep the path which duty bids ye tread 
Though worldly wisdom shake the cautious 

head ; 
No truth from Heaven descends upon our 

sphere. 
Without the greeting of the skeptic's sneer ; 
Denied and mocked at, till its blessings fall. 
Common as dew and sunshine, over all. 

Then, o'er Earth's war -field, till the 

strife shall cease. 
Like Morven's harpers, sing your song of 

peace ; 
As in old fable rang the Thracian's lyre, 
Midst howl of fiends and roar of penal fire. 
Till the fierce din to pleasing murmurs fell. 
And love subdued the maddened heart of 

hell. 
Lend, once again, that holy song a tongue. 
Which the glad angels of the Advent sung, 
Their cradle-anthem for the Saviour's birth, 
Glory to God, and peace unto the earth ! 
Through the mad discord send that calming 

word 
Which wind and wave on wild Gennesareth 

heard, 
Lift in Christ's name his Cross against the 

Sword ! 
Not vain the vision which the prophets saw. 
Skirting with green the fiery waste of war. 
Through the hot sand-gleam, looming soft 

and calm 
On the sky's rim, the fountain - shading 

palm. 
Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long 

have trod, 
The great hope resting on the truth of 

God,— 
Evil shall cease and Violence pass away. 
And the tired world breathe free through 

a long Sabbath day. 



THE PRISONER FOR DEBT 

Before the law authorizing imprisonment for 
debt had been abolished in Massachusetts, a 
revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charles- 



town jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and 
on the fourth of July was seen waving a hand- 
kyrehief from the bars of his cell in honor of 
the day. 

Look on him ! through his dungeon grate, 

Feebly and cold, the morning liglit 
Comes stealing round him, dim and late, 

As if it loathed the sight. 
Reclining on his strawy bed, 
His hand upholds his drooping head ; 
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard, 
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard ; 
And o'er his bony fingers flow 
His long, dishevelled locks of snow. 

No grateful fire before him glows, 
And yet the winter's breath is chill ; 

And o'er his half-clad person goes 
The frequent ague thrill ! 

Silent, save ever and anon, 

A sound, half murmur and half groan, 

Forces apart the painful grip 

Of the old sufferer's bearded lip ; 

Oh, sad and crushing is the fate 

Of old age chained and desolate ! 

Just God ! why lies that old man there ? 

A murderer shares his prison bed, 
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair, 

Gleam on him, fierce and red ; 
And the rude oath and heartless jeer 
Fall ever on his loathing ear. 
And, or in wakefulness or sleep. 
Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep 
Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb. 
Crimson with murder, touches him ! 

What has the gray-haired prisoner done ? 

Has murder stained his hands with gore ? 
Not so ; his crime 's a fouler one ; 

God made the old man poor ! 
For this he shares a felon's cell, 
The fittest earthly type of hell ! 
For this, the boon for which he poured 
His young blood on the invader's sword, 
And counted light the fearful cost. 
His blood-gained liberty is lost 1 

And so, for such a place of rest. 

Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as rain 

On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest, 
And Saratoga's plain ? 

Look forth, thou man of many scars. 

Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars ; 



•368 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



It must be joy, in sooth, to see 
Yon monument upreared to thee ; 
Piled granite and a prison cell, — 
The land repays thy service well ! 

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns, 
And Hing the starry banner out ; 
Shout " Freedom ! " till your lisping ones 

Give back their cradle-shout ; 
Let boastful eloquence declaim 
Of honor, liberty, and fame ; 
Still let the poet's strain be heard, 
With glory for each second word. 
And everything with breath agree 
To praise " our glorious liberty " I 

But when the patron cannon jars 
That prison's cold and gloomy wall. 

And through its grates the stripes and stars 
Rise on the wind, and fall. 

Think ye that prisoner's aged ear 

Rejoices in the general cheer ? 

Think ye his dim and failing eye 

Is kindled at your pageantry ? 

Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb. 

What is your carnival to him ? 

Down with the law that binds him thus ! 

Unworthy freemen, let it find 
No refuge from the withering curse 

Of god and human-kind ! 
Open the prison's living tomb. 
And usher from its brooding gloom 
The victims of your savage code 
To the free sun and air of God ; 
No longer dare as crime to brand 
The chastening of the Almighty's hand. 



THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS 

The reader of the biography of William 
Allen, the philanthropic associate of Clarkson 
and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his simple 
and beautiful record of a tour through Eiu-ope, 
in the years 1818 and 1819, in the company of 
his American friend, Stephen Grellett. 

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest 
Goaded from shore to shore ; 

No schoolmen, turning, in their classic 
quest, 
The leaves of empire o'er. 

Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts 
The love of man and God, 



Isles of old song, the Moslem's aucieni 
marts, 
And Scythia's steppes, they trod. 

Where the long shadows of the fir and pine 

In the night sun are cast. 
And the deep heart of many a Norland 
mine 
Quakes at each riving blast ; 
Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa 
stands, 
A baptized Scythian queen. 
With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled 
hands, 
The North and East between ! 

Where still, through vales of Grecian fable 
stray 
The classic forms of yore, 
And beauty smiles, new risen from the 
spray. 
And Dian weeps once more ; 
Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart re- 
sounds ; 
And Stamboul from the sea 
Lifts her tall minarets over burial-grounds 
Black with the cypress-tree ! 

From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome, 

Following the track of Paid, 
And where the Alps gird round the Switz- 
er's home 

Their vast, eternal wall ; 
They paused not by the ruins of old time, 

They scanned no pictures rare. 
Nor lingered where the snow-locked moun- 
tains climb 

The cold abyss of air ! 

But unto prisons, where men lay in chains, 

To haunts where Hunger pined, 
To kings and courts forgetful of the pains 

And wants of human-kind, 
Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of 
good, 

Along their way, like flowers. 
Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only could 

With princes and with powers ; 

Their single aim the purpose to fulfil 

Of Truth, from day to day. 
Simply obedient to its guiding will, 

They held their pilgrim way. 
Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and old 

Were wasted on their sight, 



THE MEN OF OLD 



369 



Who in the school of Christ had learned to 
hold 
All outward things aright. 

Not less to them the breath of vineyards 
blown 

From off the Cyprian shore, 
Not less for them the Alps in sunset shone, 

That man they valued more. 
A life of beauty lends to all it sees 

The beauty of its thought ; 
And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies 

Make glad its way, unsought. 

In sweet accordancy of praise and love, 

The singing waters run ; 
And sunset mountains wear in light above 

The smile of duty done ; 
Sure stands the promise, — ever to the 
meek 

A heritage is given ; 
Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, 
seek 

The righteousness of Heaven ! 



THE MEN OF OLD 

Well speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast ! 
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art. 
If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving 
heart, 
Thou tread'st tlie solemn Pantheon of the 
Past, 
By the great Future's dazzling hope 

made blind 
To all the beauty, power, and truth be- 
hind. 
Not without reverent awe shouldst thou 
put by 
The cypress branches and the amaranth 

blooms, 
Where, with clasped hands of prayer, 
upon their tombs 
The effigies of old confessors lie, 
God's witnesses ; the voices of His will, 
Heard in the slow march of the centuries 

still ! 
Such were the men at whose rebuking 

frown. 
Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's knee 

went down ; 
Such from the terrors of the guilty drew 
The vassal's freedom and the poor man's 
due. 



St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore 
In Heaven's sweet peace !) forbade, of 

old, the sale 
Of men as slaves, and from the sacred 

pale 
Hurled the Northumbrian buyers of the 

poor. 
To ransom souls from bonds and evil fate 
St. Ambrose melted down the sacred 

plate, — 
Image of saint, the chalice, and the pix. 
Crosses of gold, and silver candlesticks. 
" Man is worth moi-e than temples ! " he 

replied 
To such as came his holy work to chide. 
And brave Cesarius, stripping altars bare, 
And coining from the Abbey's golden 

hoard 
The captive's freedom, answered to the 

prayer 
Or threat of those whose fierce zeal for 

the Lord 
Stifled their love of man, — " An earthen 

dish 
The last sad supper of the Master bore : 
Most miserable sinners ! do ye wish 

More than your Lord, and grudge His 

dying poor 
What your own pride and not His need 

requires ? 
Souls, than these shining gauds. He 

values more : 
Mercy, not sacrifice. His heart desires ! " 
O faithful worthies ! resting far behind 
In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep. 
Much has been done for truth and human- 
kind ; 
Shadows are scattered wherein ye groped 

blind ; 
Man claims his birthright, freer pulses 

leap 
Through peoples driven in your day like 



Yet, like your own, our age's sphere Af 

light. 
Though widening still, is walled around by 

night ; 
With slow, reluctant eye, the Church has 

read. 
Skeptic at heart, the lessons of its Head ; 
Counting, too oft, its living members less 
Thau the wall's garnish and the pulpit's 

dress ; 
World-moving zeal, with power to bless 

and feed 



37° 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter 

need, 
Instead of bread, holds out the stone of 

creed ; 
Sect builds and worships where its wealth 

and pride 
And vanity stand shrined and deified, 
Careless that in the shadow of its walls 
God's living temple into ruin falls. 
We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still, 
Saints true of lite, and martyrs strong of 

will, 
To tread the land, even now, as Xavier 

trod 
The streets of Goa, barefoot, with his 

bell, 
Proclaiming freedom in the name of God, 
And startling tyrants with the fear of 

hell! 
Soft words, smooth prophecies, are 

doubtless well ; 
But to rebuke the age's popular crime, 
We need the souls of fire, the hearts of 

that old time ! 



TO PIUS IX 

The writer of these lines is no enemy of 
Catholics. He has, on more than one occa- 
sion, exposed himself to the censures of his 
Protestant brethren, by his strenuous endea- 
vors to procure indemnlfieation for the own- 
ers of the convent destroyed near Boston. 
He defended the cause of the Irish patriots 
long- before it had become popular in this 
country ; and he was one of the first to urg-e 
the most liberal aid to the suffering and starv- 
ing population of the Catholic island. The 
severity of his language finds its ample apol- 
ogy in the reluctant confession of one of the 
most eminent Romish priests, the eloquent 
and devoted Father Ventura. 

The cannon's brazen lips are cold ; 

No red shell blazes down the air ; 
And street and tower, and temple old, 

Are silent as despair. 

The Lombard stands no more at bay, 

Rome's fresh yoimg life has bled in vain; 

The ravens scattered by the day 
Come back with night again. 

Kow, while the fratricides of France 
Are treading on the neck of Rome, 



Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance ! 
Coward and cruel, come ! 

Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt ; 

Thy mummer's part was acted well, 
While Rome, with steel and fire begirt. 

Before thy crusade fell ! 

Her death-groans answered to thy prayer ; 

Thy chant, the drum and bugle-call ; 
Thy lights, the burning villa's glare ; 

Thy beads, the shell and ball ! 

Let Austria clear thy way, with hands 
Foul from Ancona's cruel sack. 

And Naples, with his dastard bands 
Of murderers, lead thee back ! 

Rome's lips are dumb ; the orphan's wail. 
The mother's shi-iek, thou mayst not hear 

Above the faithless Frenchman's hail, 
The unsexed shaveling's cheer ! 

Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight, 
The double curse of crook and crown, 

Though woman's scorn and manhood's hate 
From wall and roof flash down ! 

Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall. 
Not Tiber's flood can wash away, 

Where, in thy stately Quirinal, 
Thy mangled victims lay ! 

Let the world murmur ; let its cry 
Of horror and disgust be heard ; 

Truth stands alone ; thy coward lie 
Is backed by lance and sword ! 

The cannon of St. Angelo, 

And chanting priest and claiiging bell. 
And beat of drum and bugle blow. 

Shall greet thy coming well ! 

Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves 
Fit welcome give thee ; for her part, 

Rome, frowning o'er her new-made graven 
Shall curse thee from her heart ! 

No wreaths of sad Campagua's flowers 
Shall childhood in thy pathway fling • 

No garlands from their ravaged bowers 
Shall Terni's maidens bring ; 

But, hateful as that tyrant old. 
The mocking witness of his crime, 



OUR STATE 



371 



In thee sliall loathing eyes behold 


" God is good and God is light, 


The Nero of our time ! 


In this faith I rest secure ; 




Evil can but serve the right, 


Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed, 


Over all shall love endure. 


Mock Heaven with impious thanks and 




call 


" Of your spectral puppet play 


Its curses on the patriot dead, 


I have traced the cunning wires ; 


Its blessings on the Gaul ! 


Come what will, I needs must say, 




God is true, and ye are liars." 


Or sit upon thy throne of lies. 




A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared, 


When the thought of man is free, 


Whom even its worshippers despise, 


Error fears its lightest tones ; 


Unhonored, unrevered ! 


So the priest cried, " Sadducee ! " 




And the people took up stones. 


Yet, Scandal of the World ! from thee 




One needful truth mankind shall learn : 


In the ancient burjdng-ground, 


Tliat kings and priests to Liberty 


Side by side the twain now lie ; 


And God are false in turn. 


One with humble grassy mound, 




One with marbles pale and high. 


Earth wearies of them ; and the long 




Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth 


But the Lord hath blest the seed 


fail : 


Which that tradesman scattered then. 


Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong 


And the preacher's spectral creed 


Wake, struggle, and prevail ! 


Chills no more the blood of men. 


Not vainly Roman hearts have bled 


Let us trust, to one is known 


To feed the Crosier and the Crown, 


Perfect love which casts out fear, 


If, roused thereby, the world shall tread 


While the other's joys atone 


The twin-born vampires down ! 


For the wrong he suffered here. 


CALEF IN BOSTON 


OUR STATE 


1692 


[Originally entitled Dedication of a School- 




house. It was written for the dedication services 


In the solemn days of old. 


of a new school building- in Newbury, Mass.] 


Two men met in Boston town. 




One a tradesman frank and bold, 


The South-land boasts its teeming cane, 


One a preacher of renown. 


The prairied West its heavy grain. 




And sunset's radiant gates unfold 


Cried the last, in bitter tone : 


On rising marts and sands of gold ! 


" Poisoner of the wells of truth ! 




Satan's hireling, thou hast sown 


Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State 


With his tares the heart of youth ! " 


Is scant of soil, of limits strait ; 




Her yellow sands are sands alone. 


Spake the simple tradesman then, 


Her only mines are ice and stone ! 


"God be judge 'twixt thee and me ; 




All thou knowest of truth hath been 


From Autumn frost to April rain, 


Once a lie to men like thee. 


Too long her winter woods complain ; 




From budding flower to falling leaf, 


" Falsehoods which we spurn to-day 


Her summer time is all too brief. 


Were the truths of long ago ; 




Let the dead boughs fall away. 


Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands. 


Fresher shall the living grow. 


And wintry hills, the school-house stands, 



37- 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



And wliat her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies. 

The riches of the Commonwealth 
Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health; 
And more to her than gold or grain, 
The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

For well she keeps her ancient stock, 
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock ; 
And still maintains, with milder laws. 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause ! 

Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands, 
While near her school the church -spire 

stands ; 
Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, 
While near her church -spire stands the 

school. 



THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES 

I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound 

Li Naples, dying for the lack of air 

And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of 

pain, 
Where hope is not, and innocence in vain 
Appeals against the torture and the chain ! 
Unfortunates ! whose crime it was to share 
Our common love of freedom, and to dare, 
Li its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-crowned, 
And her base pander, the most hateful 

thing 
Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground 
Makes vile the old heroic name of king. 
O God most merciful ! Father just and 

kind ! 
Whom man hath bound let thy right hand 

unbind. 
Or, if thy purposes of good behind 
Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find 
Strong consolations ; leave them not to 

doubt 
Thy providential care, nor yet without 
The hope which all thy attributes inspire, 
That not in vain the martyr's robe of 

fire 
Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting 

chain ; 
Since all who suffer for thy truth send 

forth. 
Electrical, with every throb of pain. 
Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal 

rain 



Of fire and spirit over all the earth, 
Making tlie dead in slavery live again. 
Let this great hope be with them, as they 

lie 
Shut from the light, the greenness, and the 

sky ; 
From the cool waters and the pleasant 

breeze. 
The smell of flowers, and shade of summer 

trees ; 
Bound with the felon lepers, whom dis- 
ease 
And sins abhorred make loathsome ; let 

them share 
Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear 
Years of unutterable torment, stern and 

still, 
As the chained Titan victor through his 

will ! 
Comfort tliem with thy future ; let them 

see 
The day-dawn of Italian liberty ; 
For that, with all good things, is hid with 

Thee, 
And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time 

to be ! 

I, who have spoken for freedom at the 
cost 

Of some weak friendships, or some paltry 
prize 

Of name or place, and more than I have 
lost 

Have gained in wider reach of sympathies, 

And free communion with the good and 
wise ; 

May God forbid that I should ever boast 

Such easy self-denial, or repine 

That the strong pulse of health no more is 
mine ; 

That, overworn at noonday, I must yield 

To other hands the gleaning of the field ; 

A tired on-looker through the day's de- 
cline. 

For blest beyond deserving still, and know- 
ing 

That kindly Providence its care is show- 

In the withdrawal as in the bestowing. 
Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray. 
Beautiful yet for me this autumn day 
Melts on its sunset hills ; and, far away, 
For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm. 
To me the pine- woods whisper ; and for 
me 



ASTR^A 



373 



You river, winding through its vales of 
calm, 

By greenest banks, with asters purple- 
starred. 

And gentian bloom and golden-rod made 

gay. 

Flows down in silent gladness to the sea, 
Like a pure spirit to its great reward ! 

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and 

dear. 
Whose love is round me like this atmos- 
phere, 
Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts to 

me 
What shall I render, my God, to thee ? 
Let me not dwell upon my lighter share 
Of pain and ill that human life must bear ; 
Save me from selfish pining ; let my heart, 
Drawn from itself in sympathy, forget 
The bitter longings of a vain regret. 
The anguish of its own peculiar smart. 
Remembering others, as I have to-day, 
In their great sorrows, let me live alvvay 
Not for myself alone, but have a part. 
Such as a frail and erring spirit may. 
In love which is of Thee, and which indeed 
Thou art ! 



THE PEACE OF EUROPE 

" Great peace in Europe ! Order reigns 
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains ! " 
So say her kings and priests ; so say 
The lying prophets of our day. 

Go lay to earth a listening ear ; 
The tramp of measured marches hear ; 
The rolling of the cannon's wheel, 
The sliotted musket's murderous peal, 
The night alarm, the sentry's call, 
The quick-eared spy in hut and hall ! 
From Polar sea and tropic fen 
The dying-groans of exiled men ! 
The bolted cell, the galley's chains, 
The scaffold smoking with its stains ! 
Order, the hush of brooding slaves ! 
Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves ! 

O Fisher ! of the world-wide net. 
With meshes in all waters set, 
Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell 
Bolt liard the patriot's prison-cell. 
And open wide the banquet-hall, 



Where kings and priests hold carnival I 

Weak vassal tricked in royal guise, 

Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies ; 

Base gambler for Napoleon's crown, 

Barnacle on his dead renown ! 

Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan, 

Crowned scandal, loathed of God and man ; 

And thou, fell Spider of the North ! 

Stretching thy giant feelers forth, 

Within whose web the freedom dies 

Of nations eaten up like flies ! 

Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and 

Czar! 
If this be Peace, pray what is War ? 

White Angel of the Lord ! unmeet 

That soil accursed for thy pure feet. 

Never in Slavery's desert flows 

The fountain of thy charmed repose ; 

No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves 

Of lilies and of olive-leaves ; 

Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell. 

Thus saith the Eternal Oracle ; 

Thy home is with the pure and free ! 

Stern herald of thy better day. 

Before thee, to prepare thy way. 

The Baptist Shade of Liberty, 

Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must presc 

With bleeding feet the wilderness ! 

Oh that its voice might pierce the ear 

Of princes, trembling while they hear 

A cry as of the Hebrew seer : 

Repent ! God's kingdom draweth near ! 



ASTR^A 

" Jove means to settle 
Astraea in her seat again, 
And let down from his golden chain 

An age of better metal." 

Ben Jonson, IClSk 

O POET rare and old ! 

Thy words are prophecies ; 
Forward the age of gold, 

The new Saturuiau lies. 

The universal prayer 

And hope are not in vain ; 

Rise, brothers ! and prepare 
The way for Saturn's reign. 

Perish shall all which takes 
From labor's board and can ; 

Perish shall all which makes 
A spaniel of the man ! 



374 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Free from its bonds the mind, 


The honored and the wise once more 


The body from tlie rod ; 


Within his presence came ; 


Broken all chains that bind 


And lingered oft on lovely lips 


The image of our God. 


His once forbidden name. 


Just men no longer pine 


There may be glory in the might, 


Behind their prison-bars ; 


That treadeth nations down; 


Through the rent dungeon shine 


Wreaths for the crimson conqueror, 


The free sun and the stars. 


Pride for the kingly crown ; 




But nobler is that triumph hour, 


Earth own, at last, untrod 


The disenthralled shall find, 


By sect, or caste, or clan, 


When evil passion boweth down 


The fatherhood of God, 


Unto the Godlike mind ! 


The brotherhood of man ! 




Fraud fail, craft perish, forth 
The money-changers driven, 


THE POOR VOTER ON ELEC- 


And God's will done on earth, 


TION DAY 


As now in heaven ! 






The proudest now is but my peer, 




The highest not more high ; 


THE DISENTHRALLED 


To-day, of all the weary year. 




A king of men am I. 


He had bowed down to drunkenness, 


To-day alike are great and small, 


An abject worshipper : 


The nameless and the known ; 


The pride of manhood's pulse had grown 


My palace is the people's hall. 


Too faint and cold to stir ; 


The ballot-box my throne ! 


And he had given his spirit up 




To the unblessed thrall. 


Who serves to-day upon the list 


And bowing to the poison cup, 


Beside the served shall stand ; 


He gloried in his fall ! 


Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, 




The gloved and dainty hand ! 


There came a change — the cloud rolled off. 


The rich is level with the poor. 


And light fell on his brain — 


The weak is strong to-day ; 


And like the passing of a dream 


And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 


That cometh not again. 


Than homespun frock of gray. 


The shadow of the spirit fled. 




He saw the gulf before, 


To-day let pomp and vain pretence 


He shuddered at the waste behind. 


My stubborn right abide ; 


And was a man once more. 


I set a plain man's common sense 




Against the pedant's pride. 


He shook the serpent folds away, 


To-day shall simple manhood try 


That gathered round his heart, 


The strength of gold and land ; 


As shakes the swaying foi'est-oak 


The wide world has not wealth to buy 


Its poison vine apart ; 


The power in my right hand ! 


He stood erect ; returning pride 




Grew terrible within, 


While there 's a grief to seek redres.'Sj 


And conscience sat in judgment, on 


Or balance to adjust, 


His most familiar sin. 


Where weighs our living manhood less 




Than Mammon 's vilest dust, — 


The light of Intellect again 


While there 's a right to need my vote, 


Along his pathway shone ; 


A wrong to sweep away, 


And Reason like a monarch sat 


Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat ! 


Upon his olden throne. 


A man 's a man to-day ! 



THE DREAM OF PIO NONO 



375 



THE DREAM OF PIO NONO 

It chanced that while the pious troops of 
France 
Fought in the crusade Pio Nono preaelied, 
What time the holy Bourhons stayed his 

hands 
(The Hur and Aaron meet for such a 

Moses), 
Stretched forth from Naples towards rebel- 
lious Rome 
To bless the ministry of Oudhiot, 
And sanctify his iron iiomilies 
And sharp persuasions of the bayonet, 
That the great pontiff fell asleep, and 
dreamed. 

He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the sun 
Of the bright Orient ; and beheld the 

lame. 
The sick, and blind, kneel at the Master's 

feet. 
And rise up whole. And, sweetly over 

all. 
Dropping the ladder of their hymn of praise 
From heaven to earth, m silver rounds of 

song, 
He heard the blessed angels sing of peace. 
Good-will to man, and glory to the Lord. 

Then one, with feet unshod, and leathern 

face 
Hardened and darkened by fierce summer 

suns 
And hot winds of the desert, closer drew 
His fisher's haick, and girded up his loins, 
And spake, as one who had authority : 
" Come thou with me." 

Lakeside and eastern sky 
And the sweet song of angels passed away, 
And, with a dream's alacrity of change. 
The priest, and the swart fisher by his 

side. 
Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes 
And" solemn fanes and monumental pomp 
Above the waste Campagna. On the hills 
The blaze of burning villas rose and fell, 
And momently the mortar's iron throat 
Roared from the trenches ; and, within the 

walls. 
Sharp crash of shells, low groans of human 

pain, 



Shont, drum beat, and the clanging larum- 

bell. 
And tramp of hosts, sent up a mingled 

sound. 
Half wail and half defiance. As they passed 
The gate of San Pancrazio, human blood 
Flowed ankle-high about them, and dead 

men 
Choked the long street with gashed and 

gory piles, — 
A ghastly barricade of mangled flesh. 
From which, at times, quivered a living 

hand. 
And white lips moved and moaned. A 

father tore 
His gray hairs, by the body of his son. 
In frenzy ; and his fair young daughter 

wept 
On his old bosom. Suddenly a flash 
Clove the thick sulphurous air, and man 

and maid 
Sank, crushed and mangled by the shatter- 
ing shell. 

Then spake the Galilean : " Thou hast 
seen 
The blessed Master and His works of love; 
Look now on thine ! Hear'st thou the 



smg 

Above this open hell ? Thou God's high- 
priest ! 

Thou the Vicegerent of the Prince of Peace ! 

Thou the successor of His chosen ones ! 

I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee, 

In the dear Master's name, and for the 
love 

Of His true Church, proclaim thee Anti- 
christ, 

Alien and separate from His holy faith 

Wide as the difference between death and 
life. 

The hate of man and the great love of God ! 

Hence, and repent ! " 

Tliereat the pontiff woke, 
Trembling, and muttering o'er his fearful 

dream. 
" What means he ? " cried the Bourbon. 

" Nothing more 
Than that your majesty hath all too well 
Catered for your poor guests, and that, in 

sooth, 
The Holy Father's supper troubleth him," 
Said Cardinal Antonelli, with a smile. 



376 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



THE VOICES 

" Why urge the long, unequal fight, 
Since Truth has fallen in the street, 

Or lift anew the trampled light, 

Quenched by the heedless million's feet ? 

" Give o'er the thankless task ; forsake 
The fools who know not ill from good : 

Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take 
Thine ease among the multitude. 

" Live out thyself ; with others share 
Thy proper life no more ; assume 

The unconcern of sun and air, 

For life or death, or blight or bloom. 

" The mountain pine looks calmly on 

The fires that scourge the plains be- 
low. 

Nor heeds the eagle in the sun 

The small birds piping in the snow ! 

" Tlie world is God's, not thine ; let Him 
Work out a cliange, if change must be : 

The hand that planted best can trim 
And nurse the old unfruitful tree." 

So spake the Tempter, when the light 
Of sun and stars had left the sky ; 

I listened, through the cloud and night, 
And heard, methonght, a voice reply : 

" That task may well seem over-hard, 
Who scatterest in a thankless soil 

Thy life as seed, with no reward 
Save that which Duty gives to Toil. 

" Not wholly is thy heart resigned 
To Heaven's benign and just decree, 

Which, linking thee with all thy kind. 
Transmits their joys and griefs to thee. 

" Break off that sacred chain, and turn 
Back on thyself thy love and care ; 

Be thou thine own mean idol, burn 

Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, 
there. 

" Released from that fraternal law 

Which shares the common bale and bliss, 

No sadder lot co>dd Folly draw, 

Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this. 



" The meal unshared is food unblest : 
Thou lioard'st in vain what love should 
spend ; 

Self-ease is pain ; thy only rest 
Is labor for a worthy end ; 

" A toil that gains with what it yields, 
And scatters to its own increase. 

And hears, while sowing outward fields, 
The harvest-song of inward peace. 

" Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run, 
Free shines for all the healthful ray ; 

The still pool stagnates in the sun. 
The lurid earth-fire haunts decay ! 

" What is it that the crowd requite 

Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies ? 

And but to faith, and not to sight, 
The walls of Freedom's temple rise ? 

" Yet do thy work ; it shall succeed 

Li thine or in another's day ; 
And, if denied the victor's meed, 

Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay. 

" Faith shares the future's promise ; Love's 
Self-offering is a triumph won ; 

And each good thought or action moves 
The dark world nearer to the sun. 

" Then faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thj' weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 

The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 

" Thy nature, which, through fire and flood, 
To place or gain finds out its way. 

Hath power to seek the highest good. 
And duty's holiest call obey ! 

" Strivest thou in darkness ? — foes with- 
out 

In league with traitor thoughts within ; 
Thy night-watch kept with trembling Doubt 

And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin ? 

" Hast thou not, on some week of storm. 
Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair. 

And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form 
The curtains of its tent of prayer ? 

" So, haply, when thy task shall end. 
The wrong shall lose itself in right. 



THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND 



377 



And all thy week-day darkness blend 
With the long Sabbath of the light ! 



THE NEW EXODUS 

Written upon hearing' that slavery had been 
formally abolished in Egypt. Unhappily, the 
professions and pledg-es of the vacillating gov- 
ernment of Egypt proved unreliable. 

By fire and cloud, across the desert sand, 
And through tlie parted waves, 

From their long bondage, with an out- 
stretched hand, 
God led the Hebrew slaves ! 

Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch, 

As Egypt's statues cold. 
In the adytum of the sacred book 

Now stands that marvel old. 

" Lo, God is great ! " the simple Moslem 
says. 
We seek the ancient date. 
Turn the dry scroll, and make that living 
phrase 
A dead one : " God was great ! " 

And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's 
wells. 
We dream of wonders past, 
Vague as tlie tales the wandering Arab 
tells. 
Each drowsier than the last. 

O fools and blind ! Above the Pyramids 
Stretches once more that hand. 

And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids, 
Flings back her veil of sand. 

And morning -smitten Memnon, singing, 
wakes ; 
And, listening by his Nile, 
O'er Amnion's grave and awful visage 
breaks 
A sweet and human smile. 

Not as before, with hail and fire, and call 
Of death for midnigiit graves. 

But in the stillness of the noonday, fall 
The fetters of the slaves. 

No longer through the Red Sea, as of old, 
The bondmeu walk dry shod ; 



Through human hearts, by love of Him 
controlled. 
Runs now that path of God ! 



THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND 

" Joseph Sturge, with a companion, Thomas 
Harvey, has been visiting the shores of Fin- 
land, to ascertain the amount of mischief and 
loss to poor and peaceable sufferers, occasioned 
by the gun-boats of the allied squadrons in the 
late war, with a view to obtaining relief for 
them." — Friends^ Beview. 

Across the frozen marshes 

The winds of autumn blow. 
And the fon-lands of the Wetter 

Are white with early snow. 

But where the low, gray headlands 

Look o'er the Baltic brine, 
A bark is sailing in the track 

Of England's battle-line. 

No wares hath she to barter 
For Bothnia's fish and grain ; 

She saileth not for pleasure, 
She saileth not for gain. 

But still by isle or mainland 
She drops her anchor down, 

Where'er the British cannon 
Rained fire on tower and town. 

Outspake the ancient Amtman, 

At the gate of Helsingfors : 

" Why comes this ship a-spying 

In the track of England's wars ? " 

" God bless her," said the coast-guard, — 
" God bless the ship, I say. 
The holy angels trim the saUs 
That speed her on her way ! 

" Where'er she drops her anchor, 
The peasant's heart is glad ; 
Where'er she spreads her parting sail, 
The peasant's heart is sad. 

" Each wasted town and hamlet 
She visits to restore ; 
To roof the shattered cabin, 
And feed the starving poor. 



378 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



' The sunken boats of fishers, 

The foraged beeves and grain, 
The spoil of flake and storehouse, 
The good ship brings again. 

' And so to Finland's sorrow 

The sweet amend is made. 
As if the healing hand of Christ 
Upon her wounds were laid ! " 

Then said the gray old Amtman, 
" The will of God be done ! 

The battle lost by England's hate, 
By England's love is won ! 

' "We braved the iron tempest 

That thundered on our shore ; 

But when did kindness fail to find 

The key to Finland's door ? 

' No more from Aland's ramparts 

Shall warning signal come. 
Nor startled Sweaborg hear agaiu 
The roll of midnight drum. 

' Beside our fierce Black Eagle 

The Dove of Peace shall rest ; 
And in the months of cannon 
The sea-bird make her nest. 

' For Finland, looking seaward, 

No coming foe shall scan ; 
And the holy bells of Abo 

Shall ring, ' Good-will to man ! ' 

* Then row thy boat, O fisher ! 
In peace on lake and bay ; 
And thou, young maiden, dance again 
Around the poles of May ! 

' Sit down, old men, together, 

Old wives, in quiet spin ; 
Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon 
Is the brother of the Finn ! " 



THE EVE OF ELECTION 

From gold to gray 

Our mild sweet day 
Df Indian Summer fades too soon ; 

But tenderly 

Above the sea 
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon. 



In its pale fire. 

The village spire 
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance ; 

The painted walls 

Whereon it falls 
Transfigured stand in marble trance ! 

O'er fallen leaves 

The west-wind grieves. 
Yet comes a seed-time round again ; 

And morn shall see 

The State sown free 
With baleful tares or healthful grain. 

Along the street 

The shadows meet 
Of Destiny, whose hands conceal 

The moulds of fate 

That shape the State, 
And make or mar the common weal. 

Around I see 

The powers that be ; 
I stand by Empire's primal springs ; 

And princes meet, 

In every street, 
Aiid hear the tread of uncrowned kings 1 

Hark ! through the crowd 

The laugh runs loud, 
Beneath the sad, rebuking moon. 

God save the land 

A careless hand 
May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon ! 

No jest is this ; 

One cast amiss 
May blast the hope of Freedom's year. 

Oh, take me where 

Are hearts of prayer. 
And foreheads bowed in reverent fear ! 

Not lightly fall 

Beyond recall 
The written scrolls a breath can float ; 

The crowning fact, 

The kingliest act 
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote I 

For pearls that gem 

A diadem 
The diver in the deep sea dies ; 

The regal right 

We boast to-night 
Is ours through costlier sacrifice ; 



FROM PERUGIA 



379 



The blood of Vane, 

His prison pain 
Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod, 

And hers whose faith 

Drew strength from death, 
And prayed her Russell up to God ! 

Our hearts grow cold, 

We lightly hold 
A riglit which brave men died to gain ; 

The stake, the cord, 

The axe, the sword. 
Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 

The shadow rend. 

And o'er us bend, 
O martyrs, with your crownis and palms ; 

Breathe through these throngs 

Your battle songs. 
Your scaffold prayers, and dmigeon psalms ! 

Look from the sky, 

Like God's great eye. 
Thou solemn moon, with searching beam, 

Till in the sight 

Of thy pure light 
Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 

Shame from our hearts 

Unworthy arts, 
The fraud designed, the purpose dark ; 

And smite away 

The hands we lay 
Profanely on the sacred ark. 

To party claims 

And private aims. 
Reveal that august face of Truth, 

Whereto are given 

The age of heaven, 
The beauty of immortal youth. 

So shall our voice 

Of sovereign choice 
Swell the deep bass of duty done. 

And strike the key 

Of time to be, 
When God and man shall speak as one ! 



FROM PERUGIA 

" The thinf^ which has the most dissevered 
the people from the Pope, — the unforgivable 
thing, — the breaking point between him and 



them, — has been the encouragement and pro- 
motion he gave to the officer under whom were 
executed the slaughters of Perug-ia. That made 
the breaking point in many honest hearts that 
had clung- to him before." — Hakkiet Beech- 
EK Stowe's Letters from Italy. 



The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails 
have spread. 

Flaming out in their violet, yellow, ami red ; 

And behind go the lackeys in crimson and 
buff, 

And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet 
and ruff ; 

Next, in red-legged pomp, come the cardi- 
nals forth, 

Each a lord of the church and a prince of 
the earth. 

What 's this squeak of the fife, and this bat- 
ter of drum ? 

Lo ! the Swiss of the Church from Perugia 
come ; 

The militant angels, whose sabres drive 
home 

To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed 
and abhorred. 

The good Father's missives, and " Thus 
saith the Lord ! " 

And lend to his logic the point of the sword ! 

O maids of Etruria, gazing forlorn 

O'er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and 
torn ! 

O fathers, who pluck at your gray beards 
for shame ! 

O mothers, struck dumb by a woe without 
name ! 

Well ye know how the Holy Church hire- 
ling behaves, 

And his tender compassion of prisons and 
graves ! 

There they stand, the hired stabbers, the 
blood-stains yet fresh, 

That splashed like red wine from the vin- 
tage of flesh ; 

Grim instruments, careless as pincers and 
rack 

How the joints tear apart, and the strained 
sinews crack ; 

But the hate that glares on them is sharp 
as their swords. 

And the sneer and the scowl print the air 
with fierce words ! 



38o 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Off with hats, down with knees, shout your 

vivas like mad ! 
Here 's the Pope in his holiday righteousness 

clad, 
From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn to 

the quick, 
Of sainthood in purple the pattern and 

pick. 
Who the role of the priest and the soldier 

unites, 
And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua fights ! 

Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom 
We sang our hosannas and lighted all 

Rome ; 
With whose advent we dreamed the new 

era began 
When the priest should be human, the monk 

be a man ? 
Ah, the wolf 's with the sheep, and the fox 

with the fowl. 
When freedom we trust to the crosier and 

cowl ! 

Stand aside, men of Rome ! Here 's a hang- 
man-faced Swiss — 

(A blessing for him surely can't go amiss) — 

Would kneel down the sanctified slipper to 
kiss. 

Short shrift will suffice him, — he's blest 
beyond doubt ; 

But there 's blood on his hands which would 
scarcely wash out, 

Though Peter himself held the baptismal 
spout ! 

Make way for the next ! Here 's another 
sweet son ! 

What 's this mastiff-jawed rascal in epaulets 
done ? 

He did, whispers rumor, (its truth God for- 
bid !) 

At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem 
did. 

And the mothers ? Don't name them ! 
these humors of war 

They who keep him in service must pardon 
him for. 

Hist ! here 's the arch-knave in a cardinal's 

hat. 
With the heart of a wolf, and the stealth 

of a cat 
(As if Judas and Herod together were 

rolled). 



Who keeps, all as one, the Pope's conscience 

and gold. 
Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers from 

thence. 
And flatters St. Peter while stealing his 

pence ! 

Who doubts Antonelli ? Have miracles 
ceased 

When robbers say mass, and Barabbas is 
priest ? 

When the Church eats and drinks, at its 
mystical boai'd. 

The true flesh and blood carved and shed 
by its sword, 

When its martyr, unsinged, claps the crown 
on his head, 

And roasts, as his proxy, his neighbor in- 
stead ! 

There ! the bells jow and jangle the same 
blessed way 

That they did when they rang for Barthol- 
omew's day. 

Hark! the tallow-faced monsters, nor 
women nor boys. 

Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror of 
noise. 

Te Deum laudamus ! All round without 
stint 

The incense-pot swings with a taint of blood 
in 't ! 

And now for the blessing ! Of little ac' 

count. 
You know, is the old one they heard on the 

Mount. 
Its giver was landless. His raiment was 

poor, 
No jewelled tiara His fishermen wore ; 
No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no home, 
No Swiss guards ! We order things better 

at Rome. 

So bless us the strong hand, and curse us 

the weak ; 
Let Austria's vulture have food for her 

beak ; 
Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play Bomba 

again. 
With his death-cap of silence, and halter, 

and chain ; 
Put reason, and justice, and truth under 

ban ; 
For the sin unf orgiven is freedom for man ! 



FREEDOM IN BRAZIL 



38> 



ITALY 

Across the sea I heard the groans 

Of nations in the intervals 
Of wind and wave. Their blood and bones 
Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones, 

And sucked by priestly cannibals. 

I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained 

By martyr meekness, patience, faith, 
And lo ! an athlete grimly stained, 
With corded muscles battle-strained. 
Shouting it from the fields of death ! 

I turn me, awe-struck, from the sight. 

Among the clamoring thousands mute, 
I only know that God is right, 
And that the children of the light 
Shall tread the darkness under foot. 

I know the pent flre heaves its crust, 
That sultry skies the bolt will form 
To smite them clear ; that Nature must 
The balance of her powers adjust. 

Though -nath the earthquake and the 
storm. 

God reigns, and let the earth rejoice ! 

I bow before His sterner plan. 
Dumb are the organs of my choice ; 
He speaks in battle's stormy voice, 

His praise is in the wrath of man ! 

Yet, surely as He lives, the day 

Of peace He promised shall be ours, 
To fold the flags of war, and lay 
Its sword and spear to rust away, 

And sow its ghastly fields with flowers ! 



FREEDOM IN BRAZIL 

With clearer light. Cross of the South, 
shine forth 
In blue Brazilian skies ; 
And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth 

From sunset to sunrise, 
From the great mountains to the Atlantic 
waves 
Thy joy's long anthem pour. 
Yet a few years (God make them less ! ) 
and slaves 
Shall shame thy pride no more. 



No fettered feet thy shaded margins press ; 

But all men shall walk free 
Where thou, the high-priest of the wilder- 
ness. 

Hast wedded sea to sea. 

And thou, great-hearted ruler, through 
whose mouth 
The word of God is said. 
Once more, "Let there be light !" — Son 
of the South, 
Lift up thy honored head, 
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert 

More than by birth thy own, 
Careless of watch and ward ; thou art 
begirt 
By grateful hearts alone. 
The moated wall and battle-ship may fail, 

But safe shall justice prove ; 
Stronger than greaves of brass or iron 
mail 
The panoply of love. 

Crowned doubly by man's blessing and 
God's grace. 

Thy future is secure ; 
Who frees a people makes his statue's place 

In Time's Valhalla sure. 
Lo ! from his Neva's banks the Scythian 
Czar 

Stretches to thee his hand. 
Who, with the pencil of the Northern star, 

Wrote freedom on his land. 
And he whose grave is holy by our calm 

And prairied Sangamon, 
From his gaunt hand shall drop the mar- 
tyr's palm 

To greet thee with " Well done ! " 

And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy face 
make sweet. 

And let thy wail be stilled. 
To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat 

Her promise half fulfilled. 
The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks 
still. 

No sound thereof hath died ; 
Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will 

Shall yet be satisfied. 
The years are slow, the vision tarrieth 
long, 

And far the end may be ; 
But, one by one, the fiends of ancient wrong 

Go out and leave thee free. 



382 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



AFTER ELECTION 

The clay's sharp strife is ended now, 
Our work is done, God knoweth how ! 
As on the thronged, nnrestful town 
The patience of the moon looks down, 
I Avait to hear, heside the wire, 
The voices of its tongues of fire. 

Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first : 
Be strong, my heart, to know tiie worst ! 
Hark ! there the Alleghanies spoke ; 
That sound from lake and prairie broke, 
That sunset-gun of triumph rent 
The silence of a continent ! 

That signal from Nebraska sprung, 

This from Nevada's mountain tongue ! 

Is that thy answer, strong and free, 

O loyal heart of Tennessee ? 

What strange, glad voice is that which calls 

From Wagner's grave and Sumter's walls ? 

From Mississippi's fountain-head 
A sound as of the bison's tread ! 
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak ! 
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke ! 
Cheer answers cheer from rise to set 
Of sun. We have a country yet ! 

The praise, O God, be thine alone ! 
Thou givest not for bread a stone ; 
Thou hast not led us through the night 
To blind us with i-eturning light ; 
Not through the furnace have we passed, 
To perish at its mouth at last. 

O night of peace, thy flight restrain ! 
November's moon, be slow to wane ! 
Shine on the freedman's cabin floor. 
On brows of prayer a blessing pour ; 
And give, with full assurance blest. 
The weary heart of Freedom rest ! 



DISARMAMENT 

« Put up the sword ! " The voice of Christ 

once more 
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar, 
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped 
And left dry ashes ; over trenches heaped 
With nameless dead ; o'er cities starving 

slow 



Under a rain of fire ; thro\igh wards of 

woe 
Down which a groaning diapason runs 
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, 

sons 
Of desolate women in their far-off homes, 
Waiting to hear the step that never 

comes ! 
O men and brothers ! let that voice be 

heard. 
War fails, try peace ; put up the useless 

sword ! 

Fear not the end. There is a story told 
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights 

grow cold, 
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds 

sit 
With grave responses listening unto it : 
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent, 
Buddha, the holy and benevolent. 
Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of 

look. 
Whose awful voice the hills and forests 

shook. 
" O son of peace ! " the giant cried, " thy 

fate 
Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to 

hate." 
The unarmed Buddha looking, with no 

trace 
Of fear or anger, in the monster's face. 
In pity said : " Poor fiend, even thee I 

love." 
Lo ! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank 
To hand-breadth size ; the huge abhorrence 

shrank 
Into the form and fashion of a dove ; 
And where the thunder of its rage was 

heard. 
Circling above him sweetly sang the bird : 
" Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the 

song ; 
" And peace unweaponed conquers every 

wrong ! " 



THE PROBLEM 

I 

Not without envy Wealth at times must 

look 
On their brown strength who wield the 

reaping-hook 



OUR COUNTRY 



3^3 



And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape 
the plough 
Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam; 

All who, by skill and patience, anyhow 
Make service noble, and the earth redeem 
From savageness. By kingly accolade 
Than theirs was never worthier knighthood 

made. 
^Vell for them, if, while demagogues their 

vain 
And evil counsels proffer, they maintain 
Their honest manhood uuseduced, and 
wage 
No war with Labor's riglit to Labor's gain 
Of sweet home-comfort, rest of hand and 
brain. 
And softer pillow for the head of Age. 



And well for Gain if it ungrudging yields 
Labor its just demand ; and well for 

Ease 
If in the uses of its own, it sees 
No wrong to him who tills its pleasant 

fields 
And spreads the table of its luxuries. 
The interests of the rich man and the poor 
Are one and same, inseparable evermore ; 
And, when scant wage or labor fail to give 
Food, shelter, raunent, wherewithal to 

live, 
Need has its rights, necessity its claim. 
Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame 
Test well the charity suffering long and 

kind. 
The home-pressed question of the age can 

find 
No answer in the catch-words of the blind 
Leaders of blind. Solution there is none 
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone. 



OUR COUNTRY 
Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4, 18S3. 

We give thy natal day to hope, 

O Country of our love and prayer ! 

Thy way is down no fatal slope. 
But up to freer sun and air. 

Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet 
By God's grace only stronger made, 

In future tasks before thee set 

Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. 



The fathers sleep, but men remain 
As wise, as true, and brave as they; 

Why count the loss and not the gain ? 
The best is that we have to-day. 

Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime. 
Within thy mighty bounds transpires, 

With speed defying space and time. 
Comes to us on the accusing wires ; 

While of thy wealth of noble deeds, 
Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold, 

The love that pleads for human needs, 
The wrong redressed, but half is told ! 

We read each felon's chronicle. 

His acts, his words, his gallows-mood ; 

We know the single sinner well 
And not the nine and ninety good. 

Yet if, on daily scandals fed. 

We seem at times to doubt thy worth. 
We know thee still, when all is said. 

The best and dearest spot on earth. 

From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where 
Belted with flowers Los Angeles 

Basks in the semi-tropic air. 

To where Katahdin's cedar trees 

Are dwarfed and bent by Northern winds. 
Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled ; 

Alone, the rounding century finds 
Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled. 

A refuge for the wronged and poor, 

Thy generous heart has borne the blame 

That, with them, through thy open door, 
The old world's evil outcasts came. 

But, with thy just and equal rule, 

And labor's need and breadth of lands, 

Free press and rostrum, church and school, 
Thy sure, if slow, transforming hands, 

Shall mould even them to thy design. 
Making a blessing of the ban ; 

And Freedom's chemistry combine 
The alien elements of man. 

The power that broke their prison bar 
And set the dusky millions free, 

And welded in the flame of war 
The Union fast to Liberty, 



384 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Shall it not deal with other ills, 

Redress the red man's grievance, break 

The Circean ciip which sliames and kills, 
And Labor full requital make ? 

Alone to such as fitly bear 

Thy civic lienors bid them fall ? 

And call thy daughters forth to share 
The rights and duties pledged to all ? 

Give every child his right of school. 
Merge private greed in public good, 

And spare a treasury overfull 

The tax upon a poor man's food ? 

No lack was in thy primal stock, 

No weakling founders builded here ; 

Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock, 
The Huguenot and Cavalier ; 

And they whose firm endurance gained 
The freedom of tlie souls of men. 

Whose hands, unstained with blood, main- 
tained 
The swordless commonwealth of Penn. 

And thine shall be the power of all 
To do the work which duty bids, 

And make the people's council hall 
As lasting as the Pyramids ! 

Well have thy later years made good 
Thy brave-said word a century back, 

The pledge of human brotherhood. 
The equal claim of white and black. 

That word still echoes round the world, 
And all who hear it turn to thee, 

And read upon thy flag unfurled 
The prophecies of destiny. 

Thy great world-lesson all shall learn, 
The nations in thy school shall sit. 

Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burn 
With watch-fires from thy own uplit. 

Great without seeking to be great 
By fraud or conquest, rich in gold, 

But richer in tiie large estate 

Of virtue which thy children hold, 

With peace that comes of purity 
And strength to simple justice due, 

So runs our loyal dream of thee ; 
God of our fathers ! make it true. 



O Land of lands ! to thee we give 

Our prayers, our hopes, our service free ; 

For thee thy sons shall nobly live. 
And at thy need shall die for thee ! 



ON THE BIG HORN 

In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn 
River, in which General Custer and his entire 
force were slain, the chief Rain-in-the-Face 
was one of the fiercest leaders of the Indians. 
In Longfellow's poem on the massacre, these 
lines will be remembered : — 

" Revenge ! " cried Rain-in-the-Face, 
" Revenge upon all the race 

Of the White Chief with yellow hair! " 
And the mountains dark and high 
From their crags reechoed the cry 
Of his anger and despair. 

He is now a man of peace ; and the agent at 
Standing Rock, Dakota, writes, September 28, 
1886 : " Rain-in-the-Face is very anxious to go 
to Hampton. I fear he is too old, but he desires 
very much to go." The Southern Workman^ the 
organ of General Armstrong's Industrial School 
at Hampton, Va., says in a late number : — 

" Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to 
come to Hampton, but his age would exclude 
him from the scliool as an ordinary student. 
He has shown himself very much in earnest 
about it, and is anxious, all say, to learn the 
better ways of life. It is as unusual as it is 
striking to see a man of his age, and one who 
has had such an experience, willing to give up 
the old way, and put himself in the position of 
a boy and a student." 

The years are but half a score. 
And the war-whoop sounds no more 

With the blast of bugles, where 
Straight into a slaughter pen, 
With his doomed three hundred men, 

Rode the chief with the yellow hair. 

O Hampton, down by the sea ! 
What voice is beseeching thee 

For the scholar's lowliest place ? 
Can this be the voice of him 
Who fought on the Big Horn's rim ? 

Can this be Rain-in-the-Face ? 

His war-paint is washed away. 
His hands have forgotten to slay ; 

He seeks for himself and his race 
The arts of peace and the lore 
That give to the skilled hand more 

Than the spoils of war and chase. 



ON THE BIG HORN 



385 



O chief of the Christ-like school ! 
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool 

When the victor scarred with fight 
Like a child for thy guidance craves, 
And the faces of hunters and braves 

Are turning to thee for light ? 

The hatchet lies overgrown 
Witli grass by the Yellowstone, 

Wind River and Paw of Bear ; 
And, in sign that foes are friends, 
Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends 

Its smoke in the quiet air. 

The hands that have done the wrong 
To right the wronged are strong. 
And the voice of a nation saith : 
" Enough of the war of swords, 
Enough of the lying words 

And shame of a broken faith ! " 



The hills that have watched afar 
The valleys ablaze with war 

Shall look on the tasselled corn ; 
And the dust of the grinded grain, 
Instead of the blood of the slain. 

Shall sprinkle thy banks. Big Horn I 

The Ute and the wandering Crow 
Shall know as the white men know. 

And fare as the white men fare ; 
The pale and the red shall be brothers. 
One's rights shall be as another's, 

Home, School, and House of Prayer ! 

O mountains that climb to snow, 
O river winding below. 

Through meadows by war once trod, 
O wild, waste lands that awaifc 
The harvest exceeding great, 

Break forth into praise of God 1 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



MEMORIES 

[" It was not without thought and delibera- 
tion," Whittier's biographer writes, " that in 
1888 he directed this poem to be placed at the 
head of his Poems Subjective and Reminiscent. 
He liad never before publicly acknowledged 
how much of his heart was wrapped up in this 
delightful play of poetic fancy. The poem was 
written in 1841, and although the romance it 
embalms lies far back of this date, possibly 
there is a heart still beating which fully under- 
stands its meaning. The biographer can do no 
more than make this suggestion, which has the 
sanction of the poet's explicit word. To a friend 
who told him that Memories was her favorite 
poem, he said, ' I love it too ; but I hardly 
knew whether to publish it, it was so personal 
and near my heart.' "] 

A BEAUTIFUL and happy girl, 

With step as light as summer air, 
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, 
Shadowed by many a careless curl 

Of unconfined and flowing hair ; 
A seeming child in everything. 

Save thoughtful brow and ripening 
charms, 
As Nature wears the smile of Spring 

When sinking into Summer's arms. 

A mind rejoicing in the light 

Which melted through its graceful 
bower, 
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright. 
And stainless in its holy white, 

Unfolding like a morning flower : 
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, 

With every breath of feeling woke, 
And, even when the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

How thrills once more the lengthening 
chain 

Of memory, at the thought of thee ! 
Old hopes which long in dust have lain, 
Old dreams, come thronging back again, 

And boyhood lives again in me ; 



I feel its glow upon my cheek, 
Its fulness of the heart is mine, 

As when I leaned to hear thee speak, 
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. 

I hear again thy low replies, 

I feel thy arm within my own. 
And timidly again uprise 
The fringed lids of hazel eyes. 

With soft brown tresses overblown. 
Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves, 

Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves. 

And smiles and tones more dear than 
they ! 

Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled 

My picture of thy youth to see. 
When, half a woman, half a child. 
Thy very artlessness beguiled. 

And folly's self seemed wise in thee ; 
I too can smile, when o'er that hour 

The lights of memory backward stream, 
Yet feel the while that manhood's power 

Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. 

Years have passed on, and left their trace. 

Of graver care and deeper thought ; 
And unto me the calm, cold face 
Of manhood, and to thee the grace 

Of woman's pensive beauty brought. 
More wide, perchance, for blame than 
praise. 

The school-boy's humble name has flown ; 
Thine, in the green and quiet ways 

Of unobtrusive goodness known. 

And wider yet in thought and deed 

Diverge our pathways, one in youth ; 
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, 
While answers to nay spirit's need 

The Derby dalesman's simple truth. 
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer. 

And holy day, and solemn psalm ; 
For me, the silent reverence where 

My brethren gather, slow and calm. 



RAPHAEL 



387 



STet hath thy spirit loft on me 

An impress Time has worn not out, 
And something of myself in thee, 
A shadow from the past, I see. 

Lingering, even yet, thy way about ; 
Not wholly can the heart unlearn 

Tliat lesson of its better hours. 
Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn 

To common dust that path of flowers. 

Thus, while at times before our eyes 

'I'he shadows melt, and fall apart. 
And, smiling througli them, round us lies 
The warm light of our morning skies, — 

The Indian Summer of the heart ! 
In secret sympathies of mind. 

In founts of feeling which retain 
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find 

Our early dreams not wholly vain ! 



RAPHAEL 

Suggested by the portrait of Eaphael, at Ih- 
age of fifteen. 

I SHALL not soon forget that sight : 
The glow of Autumn's westering day, 

A hazy warmth, a dreamy light, 
On Raphael's picture lay. 

It was a simple print I saw, 
The fair face of a musing boy ; 

Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe 
Seemed blending with my joy. 

A single print, — the graceful flow 
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair, 

And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow 
Unmarked and clear, were there. 

Yet through its sweet and calm repose 
I saw the inward spirit shine ; 

It was as if before me rose 
The white veil of a shrine. 

As if, as Gothland's sage has told. 
The hidden life, the man within. 

Dissevered from its frame and mould, 
By mortal eye were seen. 

Was it the lifting of that eye, 

The waving of that pictured hand ? 

Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky, 
I saw the walls expand. 



The narrow room had vanished, — space. 
Broad, luminous, remained alone. 

Through which all hues and shapes of grace 
And beauty looked or shone. 

Around the mighty master came 

The marvels which his pencil wrought, 

Those miracles of power whose fame 
Is wide as human thought. 

There drooped thy more than mortal face, 
O Mother, beautiful and mild ! 

Enfolding in one dear embrace 
Thy Saviour and thy Child ! 

The rapt brow of the Desert John ; 

The awful glory of that day 
When all the Father's brightness shone 

Through manhood's veil of clay. 

And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild 
Dark visions of the days of old, 

IIow sweetly woman's beauty smiled 
Through locks of brown and gold ! 

There Fornarina's fair young face 
Once more upon her lover shone, 

Whose model of an angel's grace 
He borrowed from her own. 

Slow passed that vision from my view. 
But not the lesson which it taught ; 

The soft, calm shadows which it threw 
Still rested on my thought : 

The truth, that painter, bard, and sage. 
Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime. 

Plant for their deathless heritage 
The fruits and flowers of time. 

We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
Of which the coming life is made, 

And fill our Future's atmosphere 
With sunshine or with shade. 

The tissue of the Life to be 

We weave with colors all our own, 

And in the field of Destiny 
We reap as we have sown. 

Still shall the soul around it call 

The shadows wliich it gathered here, 

And, painted on tlie eternal wall, 
The Past shall reappear. 



388 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Think ye the notes of holy song 
On Milton's tuneful ear have died ? 

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng 
Has vanished from his side ? 

Oh no ! — We live our life again ; 

Or warmly tonclied, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the Past remain, — 

Man's works shall follow him ! 



EGO 



WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND 

[Originally entitled Lines Written in the Book 
of a Friend.] 

On page of thine I cannot trace 
The cold and heartless commonplace, 
A statue's fixed and marble grace. 

For ever as these lines I penned, 

Still with the thought of thee will blend 

That of some loved and common friend, 

Who in life's desert track has made 
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed 
Beneath the same remembered shade. 

And hence my pen unfettered moves 
In freedom which the heart approves. 
The negligence which friendship loves. 

And wilt thou prize my poor gift less 
For simple air and rustic dress, 
And sign of haste and carelessness ? 

Oh, more than specious counterfeit 

Of sentiment or studied wit, 

A heart like thine should value it. 

Yet half I f'^ar my gift will be 
Unto thy book, if not to thee. 
Of more than doubtful courtesy. 

A banished name from Fashion's sphere, 

A lay unheard of Beauty's ear, 

Forbid, disowned, — what do they here ? 

Upon my ear not all in vain 

Came the sad captive's clanking chain, 

The groaning from his bed of pain. 



And sadder still, I saw the woe 
Which only wounded spirits know 
When Pride's strong footsteps o'er them 
go. 

Spurned not alone in walks abroad, 
But from the temples of the Lord 
Thrust out apart, like things abhorred. 

Deep as I felt, and stern and strong. 

In words which Prudence smothered long, 

My soul spoke out against the wrong ; 

Not mine alone the task to speak 
Of comfort to the poor and weak. 
And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek ; 

But, mingled in the conflict warm. 
To pour the fiery breath of storm 
Through the harsh trumpet of Reform ; 

To brave Opinion's settled frown. 
From ermined robe and saintly gown. 
While wrestling reverenced Error down. 

Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way, 
Cool shadows on the greensward lay. 
Flowers swung upon the bending spray. 

And, broad and bright, on either hand. 
Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land, 
With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned ; 

Whence voices called me like the flow, 
Which on the listener's ear will grow, 
Of forest streamlets soft and low. 

And gentle eyes, which still retain 
Their picture on the heart and brain. 
Smiled, beckoning from that path of pain. 

In vain ! nor dream, nor rest, nor pause 
Remain for him who round him draws 
The battered mail of Freedom's cause. 

From youthful hopes, from each green 

spot 
Of young Romance, and gentle Thought, 
Where storm and tumult enter not ; 

From each fair altar, where belong 
The offerings Love requires of Song 
In homage to her bright-eyed throng ; 



EGO 



389 



With soul and strength, with heart and 

hand, 
I turned to Freedom's struggling band, 
To the sad Helots of our laud. 

What marvel then that Fame should turn 
Her notes of praise to those of scorn ; 
Her gifts reclaimed, her smiles with- 
drawn ? 

What matters it ? a few years more, 
Life's surge so restless heretofore 
Shall break upon the unknown shore ! 

In that far land shall disappear 
Tlie shadows which we follow here, 
The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere ! 

Before no work of mortal liaud, 
Of human will or strength expand 
The pearl gates of the Better Land ; 

Alone in that great love which gave 
Life to the sleeper of the grave, 
Resteth the power to seek and save. 

Yet, if the spirit gazing through 

The vista of the past can view 

One deed to Heaven and virtue true ; 

If through the wreck of wasted powers, 
Of garlands wreathed from Folly's bowers. 
Of idle aims and misspent hours. 

The eye can note one sacred spot 

By Pride and Self profaned not, 

A green place in the waste of thought, 

AVhere deed or word hath rendered less 
The sum of human wretchedness. 
And Gratitude looks forth to bless ; 

The simple burst of tenderest feeling 
From sad hearts worn by evil-dealinor, 
For blessing on the hand of healing ; 

Better tlian Glory's pomp will be 
That green and blessed spot to me, 
A palm-shade in Eternity ! 

Something of Time which may invite 
The purified and spiritual sight 
To rest on with a calm delight. 



And when the summer winds shall sweep 
With their light wings my place of sleep, 
And mosses round my headsfcone creep ; 

If still, as Freedom's rallying sign. 
Upon the young heart's altars shine 
The very tires they caught from mine ; 

If words my lips once uttered still. 
In the calm faith and steadfast will 
Of other hearts, their work fulfil ; 

Perchance with joy the soul may learn 
These tokens, and its eye discern 
The fires which on those altars burn ; 

A marvellous joy that even then. 

The spirit hath its life again. 

In the strong hearts of mortal men. 

Take, lady, then, the gift I bring. 

No gay and graceful offering, 

No flower-smile of the laughing spring. 

Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh 

May, 
With Fancy's leaf-enwoven bay. 
My sad and sombre gift I lay. 

And if it deepens in thy mind 

A sense of suffering human-kind, — 

The outcast and the spirit-blind ; 

Oppressed and spoiled on every side, 
By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride, 
Life's common courtesies denied ; 

Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust, 
Children by want and misery nursed, 
Tasting life's bitter cup at first ; 

If to their strong appeals which come 
From fireless hearth, and crowded room. 
And the close alley's noisome gloom, — 

Though dark the hands upraised to thee 

In mute beseeching agony. 

Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy ; 

Not vainly on thy gentle shrine, 

Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship 

twine 
Their varied gifts, I offer mine. 



390 POEMS SUBJECTIVE 


AND REMINISCENT 




When wood-grapes were purpling and 


THE PUMPKIN 


brown nuts were falling ! 




When wild, ugly faces we carved in its 


Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the 


skin, 


sun, 


Glaring out through the dark with a candle 


The vines of the gourd and the rich melon 


within ! 


run. 


When we laughed round the corn-heap, 


And the rock and the tree and the cottage 


with hearts all in tune. 


enfold, 


Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern 


With broad leaves all greenness and blos- 


the moon. 


soms all gold, 


Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like 


Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once 


steam. 


grew. 


In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for 


While he waited to know that his warning 


her team ! 


was true. 




And longed for the storm-cloud, and lis- 


Then thanlvs for thy present ! none sweeter 


tened in vain 


or better 


For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire- 


E'er smoked from an oven or circled a 


rain. 


platter ! 




Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry 


On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish 


more fine, 


maiden 


Brighter eyes never watched o'er its bak- 


Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine 


ing, than thine ! 


laden ; 


And the prayer, which my mouth is too 


And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to be- 


full to express, 


hold 


Swells my heart that thy shadow may 


Through orange-leaves shining the broad 


never be less. 


spheres of gold ; 


That the days of thy lot may be length- 


Yet with dearer delight from his home in 


ened below. 


the North, 


And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin- 


On the fields of his harvest the Yankee 


vine grow, 


looks forth, 


And thy life be as sweet, and its last sun- 


Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow 


set sky 


fruit shines. 


Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin 


And the sun of September melts down on 


pie ! 


his vines. 




Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from East 


FORGIVENESS 


and from West, 




From North and from South come the pil- 


My heart was heavy, for its trust had 


grim and guest, 


been 


When the gray-haired New Englander sees 


Abused, its kindness answered with foul 


round his .board 


wrong ; 


The old broken links of affection restored. 


So, turning gloomily from my fellow- 


When the care-wearied man seeks his mo- 


men, 


ther once more. 


One summer Sabbath day I strolled 


And the worn matron smiles where the girl 


among 


smiled before, 


The green moimds of the village burial- 


What moistens the lip and what brightens 


place ; 


the eye ? 


Where, pondering how all human love 


What calls back the past, like the rich 


and hate 


Pumpkin pie ? 


Find one sad level ; and how, soon or 
late. 
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meek- 


Oh, fruit loved of boyhood ! the old days 


recalling, 


ened face, 



MY THANKS 



39" 



And cold hands folded over a still heart, 
Pass the green threshold of our common 
grave, 
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none 
depart. 
Awed for myself, and pitying my race, 
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave, 
Swept all my pride away, and tx'embling I 
forgave ! 



TO MY SISTER 

WITH A COPY OF "THE SUPERXATU- 
RALISM OF NEW ENGLAND " 

The work referred to was a series of papers 
under this title, contributed to the Democratic 
Review a.nd afterward collected into a volume, 
in wliich I noted some of the superstitions and 
folklore prevalent in New England. The vol- 
ume has not been kept in print, but most of 
its contents are distributed in my Literary 
liecreations and Miscellanies [now scattered in 
volumes v. and vi. of the Riverside edition]. 

Dear Sister ! while the wise and sage 
Turn coldly from my playful page. 
And count it strange that ripened age 

Should stoop to boyhood's folly ; 
I know that thou wilt judge aright 
Of all which makes the heart more light, 
Or lends one star-gleam to the night 

Of clouded Melancholy. 

Away with weary cares and themes ! 
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams ! 
Leave free once more the land which 
teems 

With wonders and romances ! 
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, 
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies 
Beneath the quaintly masking guise 

Of wild and wizard fancies. 

Lo ! once again our feet we set 

On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, 

By lonely brooks, whose waters fret 

The roots of spectral beeches ; 
Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er 
Home's whitewashed wall and painted 

floor. 
And young eyes widening to the lore 

Of faery-folks and witches. 



Dear heart ! the legend is not vain 
Which lights that holy hearth again, 
And calling back from care and pain, 

And death's funereal sadness. 
Draws round its old familiar blaze 
The clustering groups of happier days, 
And lends to sober manhood's gaze 

A glimpse of childish gladness. 

And, knowing how my life hath been 

A weary work of tongue and pen, 

A long, harsh strife with strong-willed men; 

Thou wilt not chide my turning 
To con, at times, an idle rhyme. 
To pluck a flower from childhood's clime, 
Or listen, at Life's noonday chime, 

For the sweet bells of Morning ! 

MY THANKS 

ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRE- 
SENTED TO A FRIEND 

[Formerly entitled Lines.^ 

'T IS said that in the Holy Land 

The angels of the place have blessed 

The pilgrim's bed of desert sand, 
Like Jacob's stone of rest. 

That down the hush of Syrian skies 

Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings 

The song whose holy symphonies 
Are beat by unseen wings ; 

Till starting from his sandy bed. 
The wayworn wanderer looks to see 

The halo of an angel's head 

Shine through the tamarisk-tree. 

So through the shadows of my way 
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear, 

So at the weary close of day 

Hath seemed thy voice of cheer. 

That pilgrim pressing to his goal 
May pause not for the vision's sake, 

Yet all fair things within his soul 
The thought of it shall wake : 

The graceful palm-tree by the well, 
Seen on the far horizon's rim ; 

The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle, 
Bent timidly on him ; 



392 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Each pictured saint, whose golden hair 


Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring 


Streams sunlike through the convent's 


May well defy the wintry cold, 


gloom ; 


Until, in Heaven's eternal spring. 


Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair, 


Life's fairer ones unfold. 


And loving Mary's tomb ; 




And thus each tint or shade which falls, 


REMEMBRANCE 


From sunset cloud or waving tree, 




Along my pilgrim path, recalls 


WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S 


The pleasant thought of thee. 


WRITINGS 


Of one in sun and shade the same, 


Friend of mine ! whose lot was cast 


In weal and woe my steady friend, 


With me in the distant past ; 


Whatever by that holy name 


Where, like shadows flitting fast. 


The angels comprehend. 






Fact and fancy, thought and theme, 


Not blind to faults and follies, thou 


"Word and work, begin to seem 


Hast never failed the good to see, 


Like a half-remembered dream 1 


Nor judged by one unseemly bough 




The upward-struggling tree. 


Touched by change have all things been^ 




Yet I think of thee as when 


These light leaves at thy feet I lay, — 


We had speech of lip and pen. 


Poor common thoughts on common 




things, 


For the calm thy kindness lent 


Wliich Time is shaking, day by day, 


To a path of discontent, 


Like feathers from his wings ; 


Rough with trial and dissent ; 


Cliance shootings from a frail life-tree. 


Gentle words where such were few, 


To nurturing care but little known, 


Softening blame where blame was true, 


Their good was partly learned of thee, 


Praising where small praise was due ; 


Their folly is my own. 






For a waking dream made good. 


That tree still clasps the kindly mould. 


For an ideal understood, 


Its leaves still drink the twilight dew, 


For thy Christian womanhood ; 


And weaving its pale green with gold, 




Still shines the sunlight through. 


For thy marvellous gift to cull 




From our common life and dull 


There still the morning zephyrs play, 


Whatsoe'er is beautiful ; 


And there at times the spring bird 




sings, 


Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees 


And mossy trunk and fading spray 


Dropping sweetness ; true heart's-ease 


Are flowered with glossy wings. 


Of congenial sympathies ; — 


Yet, even in genial sun and rain, 


Still for these I own my debt ; 


Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade ; 


Memory, with her eyelids wet, 


The wanderer on its lonely plain 


Fain would thank thee even yet I 


Erelong shall miss its shade. 






And as one who scatters flowers 


friend beloved, who?e curious skill 


Where the Queen of May's sweet hours 


Keeps bright the last year's leaves and 


Sits, o'ert wined with blossomed bowers, 


flowers, 




With warm, glad, summer thoughts to 


In superfluous zeal bestowing 


fill 


Gifts where gifts are overflowing, 


The cold, dark, winter hours ! 


So I pay the debt 1 'm owing. 



MY NAMESAKE 



393 



To thy full thoughts, gay or sad, 
Sunny-hued or sober clad, 
Something of my own I add ; 

Well assured that thou wilt take 
Even the offering which I make 
Kindly for the giver's sake. 



MY NAMESAKE 

Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allinson of 
Burlington, N. J. 

You scarcely need ray tardy thanks. 
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend — 

A green leaf on your own Green Banks — 
The memory of your friend. 

For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides 
The sobered brow and lessening hair : 

For aught I know, the myrtled sides 
Of Helicon are bare. 

Their scallop-shells so many bring 
The fabled founts of song to try, 

They 've drained, for aught I know, the 
spring 
Of Aganippe dry. 

Ah well ! — The wreath the Muses braid 
Proves often Folly's cap and bell ; 

Methinks, my ample beaver's shade 
May serve my turn as well. 

Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt 
Be paid by those I love in life. 

Why should the unborn critic whet 
For me his scalping-knife ? 

Why should the stranger peer and pry 
One's vacant house of life about, 

And drag for curious ear and eye 
His faults and follies out ? — 

Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon, 

With chaff' of words, the garb he wore, 

As corn-husks when the ear is gone 
Are rustled all the more ? 

Let kindly Silence close again. 
The picture vanish from the eye, 

And on the dim and misty main 
Let the small ripple die. 



Yet not the less I own your claim 

To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine. 

Hang, if it please you so, my name 
Upon your household line. 

Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide 
Her chosen names, I envy none : 

A mother's love, a father's pride, 
Shall keep alive my own ! 

Still shall that name as now recall 

The young leaf wet with morning dew. 

The glory where the sunbeams fall 
The breezy woodlands through. 

That name shall be a household word, 
A spell to waken smile or sigh ; 

In many an evening prayer be heard 
And cradle lullaby. 

And thou, dear child, in riper days 
When asked the reason of thy name, 

Shalt answer : " One 't were vain to praise 
Or censure bore the same. 

" Some blamed him, some believed him 
good, 

The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two ; 
He reconciled as best he could 

Old faith and fancies new. 

" Li him the grave and playful mixed, 
And wisdom held with folly truce, 

And Nature compromised betwixt 
Good fellow and recluse. 

" He loved his friends, forgave his foes ; 

And, if his words were harsh at times, 
He spared his fellow-men, — his blows 

Fell only on their crimes. 

" He loved the good and wise, but found 

His human heart to all akin 
Who met him on the common ground 

Of suffering and of sin. 

" Whate'er his neighbors might endure 
Of pain or grief his own became ; 

For all the ills he could not cure 
He held himself to blame. 

" His good was mainly an intent. 
His evil not of forethought done ; 

The work he wrought was rarely meant 
Or finished as begun. 



J94 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



" 111 served his tides of feeling strong 
To turn the common mills of use ; 

And, over restless wings of song, 
His birthright garb hung loose ! 

" His eye was beauty's powerless slave, 
And his the ear which discord pains ; 

Few guessed beneath his aspect grave 
What passions strove in chains. 

" He had his share of care and pain, 

No holiday was life to him ; 
Still in the heirloom cup we drain 

The bitter di'op will swim. 

" Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird 
And there a flower beguiled his way ; 

And cool, in summer noons, he heard 
The fountains plash and play. 

" On all his sad or restless moods 
The patient peace of Nature stole ; 

The quiet of the fields and woods 
Sank deep into his soul. 

" He worshipped as his fathers did, 
And kept the faith of childish days, 

And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
He loved the good old ways. 

" The .simple tastes, the kindly traits. 
The tranquil air, and gentle speech, 

The sileuce of the soul that waits 
For more than man to teach. 

" The cant of party, school, and sect. 
Provoked at times his honest scorn, 

And Folly, in its gray respect. 
He tossed on satire's horn. 

" But still his heart was full of awe 
And reverence for all sacred things ; 

And, brooding over form and law, 
He saw the Spirit's wings ! 

" Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud ; 

He heard far voices mock his own, 
Tlie sweep of wings unseen, the loud, 

Long roll of waves unknown. 

" The arrows of his straining sight 

Fell quenched in darkness ; priest and 
sage, 

Like lost guides calling left and right. 
Perplexed his doubtful age. 



" Like childhood, listening for the sound 
Of its dropped pebbles in the well, 

All vainly down the dark profound 
His brief-lined plummet fell. 

" So, scattering flowers with pious pains 
On old beliefs, of later creeds, 

Which claimed a place in Truth's do- 
mains. 
He asked the title-deeds. 

" He saw the old-time's groves and shrines 
In the long distance fair and dim ; 

And heard, like sound of far-off pines, 
The century-mellowed hynni ! 

" He dared not mock the Dervish whirl, 
The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell ; 

God knew the heart ; Devotion's pearl 
Might sanctify the shell. 

" While others trod the altar stairs 
He faltered like the publican ; 

And, while they praised as saints, his 
prayers 
Were those of sinful man. 

" For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, 
The trembling faith alone sufficed, 

That, through its cloud and flame, he 
saw 
The sweet, sad face of Christ ! 

" And listening, with his forehead bowed. 
Heard the Divine compassion fill 

The pauses of the trump and cloud 
With whispers small and still. 

"The words he spake, the thoughts he 
penned. 

Are mortal as his hand and brain. 
But, if they served the Master's end. 

He has not lived in vain ! " 

Heaven make thee better than thy name. 
Child of my friends ! — For thee I 
crave 

What riches never bought, nor fame 
To mortal longing gave. 

I pray the prayer of Plato old : 
God make thee beautiful within. 

And let thine eyes the good behold 
In everything save sin ! 



MY DREAM 



395 



Imagination held in check 

To serve, not rule, thy poised mind ; 
Thy Reason, at the frown or beck 

Of Conscience, loose or bind. 

No dreamer thou, but real all, — 

Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth 

Life made by duty epical 

And rhythmic with the truth. 

So shall that life the fruitage yield 
Which trees of healing only give, 

And green-leafed in the Eternal field 
Of God, forever live ! 



A MEMORY 

[The singer in this poem was a daughter of 
Whittiers early friend, N. P. Rogers.] 

Hkre, while the loom of Winter weaves 
The shroud of flowers and fountains, 

I think of thee and summer eves 
Among the Northern mountains. 

When thunder tolled the twilight's close, 
And winds the lake were rude on, 

And thou wert singing, Co' the Yowes, 
The bonny yowes of Cluden ! 

When, close and closer, hushing breath, 
Our circle narrowed round thee. 

And smiles and tears made up the wreath 
Wherewith our silence crowned thee ; 

And, strangers all, we felt the ties 

Of sisters and of brothers ; 
Ah ! whose of all those kindly eyes 

Now smile upon another's ? 

The sport of Time, who still apart 

The waifs of life is flinging ; 
Oh, nevermore shall heart to heart 

Draw nearer for that singing ! 

Yet when the panes are frostj'-starred, 
And twilight's fire is gleaming, 

1 hear the songs of Scotland's bard 
Sound softly through my dreaming ! 

A song that lends to winter snows 
The glow of summer weather, — 

Again I hear thee ca' the yowes 
To Cluden's hills of heather ! 



MY DREAM 

In my dream, methought I trod, 
Yesternight, a mountain road ; 
Narrow as Al Sirat's span. 
High as eagle's flight, it ran. 

Overhead, a roof of cloud 
With its weight of thunder bowed ; 
Underneath, to left and right, 
Blankuess and abysmal night. 

Here and there a wild-flower blushed ; 
Now and then a bird-song gushed ; 
Now and then, through rifts of shade, 
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played. 

But the goodly company. 
Walking in that path with me, 
One by one the brink o'erslid. 
One by one the darkness hid. 

Some with wailing and lament. 
Some with cheerful courage went ; 
But, of all who smiled or mourned; 
Never one to us returned. 

Anxiously, with eye and ear, 
Questioning that shadow drear, 
Never hand in token stirred. 
Never answering voice I heard ! 

Steeper, darker ! — lo ! I felt 
From my feet the pathway melt. 
Swallowed by the black despair, 
And the hungry jaws of air, 

Past the stony-throated caves, 
Strangled by the wash of waves, 
Past the splintered crags, I sank 
On a green and flowery bank, — 

Soft as fall of thistle-down, 
Lightly as a cloud is blown. 
Soothingly as childhood pressed 
To the bosom of its rest. 

Of the sharp-horned rocks instead. 
Green the grassy meadows spread, 
Bright with waters singing by 
Trees that propped a golden sky. 

Painless, trustful, sorrow-free, 
Old lost faces welcomed me. 



396 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



With whose sweetness of coutent 


I was once a barefoot boy ! 


Still expectant hope was blent. 


Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 




Only is republican. 


Waking while the dawning gray 


Let the million-dollared ride ! 


Slowly brightened into day, 


Barefoot, trudging at his side, 


Pondering that vision fled, 


Thou hast more than he can buy 


Thus unto myself I said: — 


In the reach of ear and eye, — 




Outward sunshine, inward joy: 


«' Steep and hung with clouds of strife 


Blessings on thee, barefoot boy I 


Is our narrow path of life; 


, 


And our death the dreaded fall 


Oh for boyhood's painless play. 


Through the dark, awaiting all. 


Sleep that wakes in laughing day. 




Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 


" So, with painful steps we climb 


Knowledge never learned of schools, 


Up the dizzy ways of time, 


Of the wild bee's morning chase. 


Ever in the shadow shed 


Of the wild-flower's time and place, 


By the forecast of our dread. 


Flight of fowl and habitude 




Of the tenants of the wood; 


" Dread of mystery solved alone, 


How the tortoise bears his shell, 


Of the untried and unknown ; 


How the woodchuck digs his cell. 


Yet the end thereof may seem 


And the ground-mole sinks his well; 


Like the falling of my dream. 


How the robin feeds her yoimg, 




How the oriole's nest is hung; 


" And this heart-consuming care, 


Where the whitest lilies blow, 


All our fears of here or there, 


Where the freshest berries grow. 


Change and absence, loss and death, 


Where the ground-nut trails its vine. 


Prove but simple lack of faith." 


Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; 




Of the black wasp's cunning way, 


Thou, Most Compassionate ! 


Mason of his walls of clay. 


Who didst stoop to our estate. 


And the architectural plans 


Drinking of tlie cup we drain. 


Of gray hornet artisans ! 


Treading in our path of pain, — 


For, eschewing books and tasks, 




Nature answers all he asks ; 


Through the doubt and mystery, 


Hand in hand with her he walks, 


Grant to us thy steps to see. 


Face to face with her he talks. 


And the grace to draw from thence 


Part and parcel of her joy, — 


Larger hope and confidence. 


Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 


Show thy vacant tomb, and let. 


Oh for boyhood's time of June, 


As of old, the angels sit, 


Crowding years in one brief moon, 


Whispering, by its open door : 


When all things I heard or saw. 


" Fear not ! He hath gone before ! " 


Me, their master, waited for. 




I was rich in flowers and trees, 




Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 


THE BAREFOOT BOY 


For my sport the squirrel played. 




Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 


Blessings on thee, little man, 


For my taste the blackberry cone 


Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 


Purpled over hedge and stone ; 


With thy turned-up pantaloons. 


Laughed the brook for my delight 


And thy merry whistled tunes ; 


Through tlie day and through the night, 


With tiiy red lip, redder still 


Whispering at the garden wall, 


Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 


Talked with me from fall to fall; 


With the sunshine on tliy face, 


Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond. 


Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; 


Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 


From my heart I give thee joy, — 


Mine, on bending orchard trees, 



MY PSALM 397 


Apples of Hesperides ! 


No longer forward nor behind 


Still as my horizon grew, 


I look in hope or fear ; 


Larger grew my riclies too ; 


But, grateful, take the good I find. 


All the world I saw or knew 


The best of now and here. 


Seemed a complex Chinese toy, 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 




I plough no more a desert land. 




To harvest weed and tare ; 


Oh for festal dainties spread, 


The manna dropping from God's hand 


Like my bowl of milk and bread ; 


Kebukes my painfid care. 


Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 




On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 


I break my pilgrim staff, I lay 


O'er nie, like a regal tent. 


Aside the toiling oar ; 


Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 


The angel sought so far away 


Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 


I welcome at my door. 


Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 




While for music came the play 


The airs of spring may never play 


Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 


Among the ripening corn. 


And, to light the noisy choir, 


Nor freshness of the flowers of May 


f^it the fly his lamp of fire. 


Blow through the autumn morn ; 


I was monarch : pomp and joy 




Waited on the barefoot boy ! 


Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 




Through fringed lids to heaven. 


Cheerily, then, my little man. 


And the pale aster in the brook 


Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 


Shall see its image given ; — 


Though the flinty slopes be hard, 




Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 


The woods shall wear their robes of praise, 


Every morn shall lead thee^through 


The south-wind softly sigh. 


Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 


And sweet, calm days in golden haze 


Every evening from thy feet 


Melt down the amber sky. 


Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 




All too soon these feet must hide 


Not less shall manly deed and word 


Li the prison cells of pride. 


Rebuke an age of wrong ; 


Lose the freedom of the sod. 


The graven flowers that wreathe the sword 


Like a colt's for work be shod, 


Make not the blade less strong. 


INLade to tread the mills of toil, 




Up and down in ceaseless moil : 


But smiting hands shall learn to heal, — 


Happy if their track be found 


To build as to destroy ; 


Never on forbidden ground ; 


Nor less my heart for others feel 


Happy if they sink not in 


That I the more enjoy. 


Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 




Ah ! that thou couklst know thy joy. 


All as God wills, who wisely heeds 


Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 


To give or to withhold, 




And knoweth more of all my needs 


MY PSALM 


Than all my prayers have told ! 


1 MOURN no more my vanished years: 


Enough that blessings undeserved 


Beneath a tender rain. 


Have marked my erring track ; 


An April rain of smiles and tears, 


That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 


My heart is young again. 


His chastening turned me back ; 


The west-winds blow, and, singing low, 


That more and more a Providence 


I hear the glad streams run ; 


Of love is understood. 


The windows of my soul I throw 


Making the springs of time and sense 


Wide open to the sun. 


Sweet with eternal good ; — • 



39S 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



That death seems but a covered way 
Which opens into light, 

Wherein no blinded chihl can stray 
Beyond the Father's sight ; 

That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air, 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
In jjurple distance fair ; 

That all the jarring notes of life 
Seem blending in a psalm. 

And all the angles of its strife 
Slow rounding into calm. 

And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west-winds play ; 

And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day. 



THE WAITING 

I WAIT and watch : before my eyes 

Methinks the night grows thin and 
gray; 

I wait and watch the eastern skies 

To see the golden spears uprise 
Beneath the oriflamme of day ! 



Like one whose limbs are bound in trance 
1 hear the day-sounds swell and grow. 
And see across the twilight glance, 
Troop after troop, in swift advance. 
The shining ones with plumes of snow ! 

I know the errand of their feet, 

1 know what mighty work is theirs ; 
I can but lift up hands unmeet 
The threshing-floors of God to beat. 

And speed them with unworthy prayers. 

I will not dream in vain despair 

The steps of progress wait for me : 
The puny leverage of a hair 
The planet's impulse well may spare, 
A drop of dew the tided sea. 

The loss, if loss there be, is mine. 

And yet not mine if understood ; 
For one shall grasp and one resign. 
One drink life's rue, and one its wine. 
And God shall make the balance good. 

Oh power to do ! Oh baffled will ! 

Oh prayer and action ! ye are one. 
AVbo niay npt strive, may yet fulfil 
The harder task of standing still. 

And good but wished with God is done ! 



SNOW-BOUND 

A WINTER IDYL 



TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES 



THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 



The inmates of the family at the Whittier 
homestead who are referred to in the poem 
Avere my father, mother, my brother and two 
sisters, and my uncle and aunt, both unmarried. 
In addition, there was the district school mas- 
ter, who boarded with us. The " not nnf eared, 
half-welcome guest " was Harriet Livermore, 
daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hamp- 
shire, a young woman of fine natural ability, 
enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over 
her violent temper, which sometimes made her 
religious profession doubtful. She Avas equally 
ready to exhort in school-hotise pr.ayer-meetings 
and dance in a Washington ball-room, while 
her father was a member of congress. She 
eaily embraced the doctrine of the Secoad Ad- 



vent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's 
speedy coming. With this message she crossed 
the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a 
long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. 
She lived some time with Lady He.ster Stan- 
hope, a woman as fantastic and mentally 
strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, 
but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two 
Avliite horses with red marks on their backs 
which suggested the idea of saddles, on whicli 
her titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusa- 
lem with the Lord. A friend of mine found 
her, when quite an old woman, wandering in 
Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Ori- 
ental notion that madness is inspiration, ac- 
cepted her as their prophetess and leader. At 



SNOW-BOUND 



399 



the time referred to in Snow-Botind she was 
boarding' at the Rocks Villag-e, about two miles 
from us. 

In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, 
we had scanty sources of information ; few 
books and only a small weekly newspaper. 
Our only annual was the Almanac. Under 
such circumstances story-telling was a neces- 
snry resource in the long- winter evenings. 
My father when a young- man had traversed 
the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of 
liis adventures with Indians and wild beasts, 
and of his sojourn in the French villages. My 
uncle was ready with his record of hunting 
and fishing and, it must be confessed, with 
stories which ho at least half believed, of witch- 
craft and apparitions. My mother, who was 
born in the Indian-haunted region of Somors- 
worth, New Hampshire, between Dover and 
Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the sav- 
ages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. 
IShe described strange people who lived on the 
Piscataqua and Cocheeo, among whom was 
Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession 
the wizard's '" conjuring book," which he sol- 
emnly opened when consulted. It is a copy 
of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1(3-")1, 
dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Mi- 
chael Scott, had learned 

" the art of glammorie 
In Padua beyond the sea," 

and who is famous in the annals of Massachu- 
setts, where he was at one time a resident, as 
the first man who dared petition the General 
Court for liberty of conscience. The full title 
of the book is three Books of Occult Philoso- 
phy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doc- 
tor of both Laws, Counsellor to Ccesar's Sacred 
Majesty and Judge of the Prerogative Court. 

" As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, 
so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are aug- 
mented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but 
also by our common Wood Fira : and as the Celestial 
Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of 
Wood doth the same." — CoB. Agrippa, Oecu/< PAi- 
losophy, Book 1. ch. v. 

" Announced by all the trumpets of the sky. 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven. 
And veils tlie farm-house at tlie garden's end. 
Tlie sled and traveller sitoppeii, tlie courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplice, enclosed 
lu a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emerson. The Snow Storm. 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 



Slow tracing down the thickening sky 

Its mute and ominous prophecy, 

A portent seeming less than threat, 

It sank from sight before it set. 

A cliill no coat, however stout, 

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold. 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 

Tlie coming of the snow-storm told. 

The wind blew east ; we beard the roar 

Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 

Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows : 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 
And down his querulous challenge sent. 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 
The gray day darkened into night, 
A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 
As zigzag, wavering to and fro, 
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : 
And ere the early bedtime came 
The white drift piled the window-frame. 
And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So all night long the storm roared on : 
The morning broke without a sun ; 
In tiny spherule traced with lines 
Of Nature's geometric signs. 
In starry flake, and pellicle, 
All day the hoary meteor fell ; 
And, when the second morning shone, 
We looked upon a world unknown. 
On notliing we could call our own. 
Around the glistening wonder bent 
The blue walls of the firmament. 
No clond above, no earth below, — 
A universe of sky and snow ! 
The old familiar sights of ours 
Took marvellous sliapes ; strange domes 
and towers 



400 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 

Or garden-wall, or belt of wood ; 

A smooth white mound the brush - pile 

showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was road ; 
The bridle-post an old man sat 
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 
The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 
And even the long sweep, high aloof. 
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
Of risa's leaning miracle. 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : " Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy ?) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew ; 
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low. 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal : we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a wish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. 
We reached the barn with merry din. 
And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about ; 
The cock his lusty greeting said. 
And forth his speckled harem led ; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked^ 
And mild repi'oach of hunger looked ; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture nuite, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before ; 
Low circling round its southern zone. 
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 
No church-bell lent its Christian tone 
To the savage air, no social smoke 
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 
A solitude made more intense 
By dreary-voiced elements, 
The shrieking of the mindless wind. 
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 
And on the glass the unmeaning beat 
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 



Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 
We minded that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship. 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near. 
We watched the first red blaze appear. 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam. 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; 
While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became. 
And through the bare-botighed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed, 
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle. 
Whispered the old rhyme : " Under the tree, 
Whenjire outdoors hums merrily, 
There the witches are making tea." 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 
Ti-ansfigured in the silver flood. 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Moat fitting that unwarming light. 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the noi-th-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door. 
While the red logs before us beat 



SNOW-BOUND 



401 



The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
Tlie great throat of the chimney laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silliouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
And, for the winter fireside meet. 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
Tlie mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the nortli-wind raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth -fire's ruddy 

glow. 
O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day. 
How strange it seems, with so much gone 
Of life and love, to still live on ! 
Ah, brother ! only I and thou 
Are left of all that circle now, — 
The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will. 
The voices of that hearth are still ; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 
We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard trees. 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read. 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade. 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will 

trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
\Vho hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own 1 



We sped the time with stories old. 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
"The Chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred 
The languorous sin-sick air, I heard : 
" Does not the voice of reason cry, 

Clabn the first right which Nature gave. 
From the red scourge of bondage fly. 

Nor deign to live a burdened slave!" 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Frangois' hemlock-trees ; 
Again for him the moonlight shone 
On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; 
Again he heard the violin play 
Which led the village dance away. 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam and the laughing girl. 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong. 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 

The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 

The hake-broil on' the drift-wood coals ; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made. 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot. 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the salted hay. 
Adrift along the winding shores. 
When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundelow 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel. 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town. 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free, 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways,) 



402 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



The story of her early days, — 
She made ns welcome to her home ; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country side ; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
The loon's weird laughter far away ; 
We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What ilowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides autuniu-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down. 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild-geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 

Then, haply, with a look more grave. 

And soberer tone, some tale she gave 

From painful Sewel's ancient tome, 

Beloved in every Quaker home, 

Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom. 

Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, — 

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 

And water-butt and bread-cask failed. 

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

His portly presence mad for food, 

With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death. 

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

" Take, eat," he said, " and be content ; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 

To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books. 
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 
The ancient teachers never dumb 
Of Nature's unhoused lyceura. 
In moons and tides and weather wise, 
He read the clouds as prophecies, 
And foul or fair could well divine, 
By many an occult hint and sign, 
Holding the cunning-warded keys 
To all the woodcraft mysteries ; 
Himself to Nature's heart so near 
That all her voices in his ear 



Of beast or bird had meanings clear. 

Like ApoUouius of old, 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes, who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man. 

Content to live where life began ; 

Strong only on his native grounds, 

The little world of sights and sounds 

Whose girdle was the parish bounds. 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 

The common features magnified. 

As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selborne's loving view, — 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got. 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten was the outside cold. 

The bitter wind unheeded blew. 

From ripening corn the pigeons flew. 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the 

mink 
Went fishing down the river-brink. 
In fields with bean or clover gay. 
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell ; 
The muskrat plied the mason's trade. 
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer 
And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate. 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness. 
And welcome wheresoe'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element, 
Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — 
Called up her girlhood memories, 
The huskings and the apple-bees. 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails. 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespmi warp of circumstance 
A golden woof-thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood ; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay. 
The mirage loomed across her way ; 
The morning dew, that dries so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon ; 



SNOW-BOUND 



403 



Through years of toil and soil and care, 

From glossy tress to tliin gray hair, 

All unprofaned she held apart 

The virgin fancies of the heart. 

Be shame to him of woman born 

Who hath for such but thought of scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside ; 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Imptdsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self-sacrifice. 

heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things ! 

How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee beneath the low green tent 
Whose curtain never outward swings ! 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed in the unfading green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill. 

Or from tlie shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago : — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For mouths upon her grave has lain ; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 

1 tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
Tlie birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
IStretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 

For something gone which should be nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things, 
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 



What change can reach the wealth I 
hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon. 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar. 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star. 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
The master of the district school 
Held at the fire his favored place, 
Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten-blinded cat. 
Flayed cross-pins on my uncle's hat. 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Born the wild Northern hills among, 
From whence his yeoman father wrung 
By patient toil subsistence scant. 
Not competence and yet not want. 
He early gained the power to pay 
His cheerfid, self-reliant way ; 
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
To peddle wares from town to town ; 
Or through the long vacation's reach 
In lonely lowland districts teach, 
Where all the droll experience found 
At stranger hearths in boarding round, 
The moonlit skater's keen delight, 
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
The rustic party, with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid, 
His 'winter task a pastime made. 
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 
Or played the athlete in the barn. 
Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, 
Or mirth-provoking versions told 
Of classic legends rare and old, 
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 
Had all the commonplace of home. 
And little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ; 
Where Findus-born Arachthus took 
The guise of any grist-mill brook, 



404 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



And dread Olympus at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 

A careless boy that uight he seemed ; 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be. 
Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
Shall every lingering wrong assail ; 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
Uplift the black and white alike ; 
Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance. 
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous 

growth. 
Made murder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison-torture possible ; 
The cruel lie of caste refute. 
Old forms remould, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will. 
For blind routine, wise-handed skill ; 
A school-house plant on every hill. 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
The quick wires of intelligence ; 
Till North and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought, 
In peace a common flag salute. 
And, side by side in labor's free 
And unresentful rivalry, 
Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest that winter night 

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young. 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 

A nature passionate and bold. 

Strong, self-concentred, spitrning guide, 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her unbent will's majestic pride. 

She sat among us, at the best, 

A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the 

lash. 
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 
And under low brows, black with night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 



Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
Condemned to share her love or hate. 
A woman tropical, intense 
In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
She blended in a like degree 
The vixen and the devotee. 
Revealing with each freak or feint 
The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist ; 
The warm, dark languish of her eyes 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 
Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
Knew every change of scowl and pout ; 
And the sweet voice had notes more high 
And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 
What convent-gate has held its lock 
Against the challenge of her knock ! 
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thorougb* 

fares. 
Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 
Or startling on her desert throne 
The crazy Queen of Lebanon 
With claims fantastic as her own, 
Her tireless feet have held their way ; 
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 
She watches under Eastern skies. 

With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 
Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 

Where'er her troubled path may be. 
The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 

The outward wayward life we see. 
The hidden springs we may not know. 

Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun. 
Through what ancestral years has run 

The sorrow with the woman born, 

What forged her cruel chain of moods, 

What set her feet in solitudes, 

And held the love within her mute. 

What mingled madness in the blood, 
A life-long discord and annoy. 
Water of tears with oil of joy. 

And hid within the folded bud 
Perversities of flower and fruit. 

It is not ours to separate 

The tangled skein of will and fate, 



SNOW-BOUND 



405 



To show what metes aud bounds should 

stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land, 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events ; 
But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate, 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is, 
That He remembereth we are dust ! 

At last the great logs, crumbling low, 
Sent out a dull and duller glow, 
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 
Ticking its weary circuit through. 
Pointed with mutely warning sign 
Its black hand to the hour of nine. 
That sign the pleasant circle broke : 
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke. 
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 
And laid it tenderly away; 
Then roused himself to safely cover 
The duU red brands with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 
Her grateful sense of happiness 
For food and shelter, warmth and health. 
And love's contentment more than wealth. 
With simple wishes (not the weak. 
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek. 
But such as warm the generous heart, 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
That none might lack, that bitter night. 
For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared. 
With now and then a ruder shock. 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost. 
The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall. 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new ; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars. 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
Of merry voices high and clear ; 



And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go. 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost. 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold. 
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 
From lip to lip ; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, 

rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot. 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law. 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-baU's compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost 
The charm with Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound ; 

And, following where the teamsters led, 
The wise old Doctor went his round, 
Just pausing at our door to say. 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all. 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed. 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light. 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity ! 

So days went on : a week had passed 
Since the great world was heard from 

last. 
The Almanac we studied o'er. 
Read and reread our little store 
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score ; 
One harmless novel, mostly hid 
From younger eyes, a book forbid, 



4o6 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



And poetry, (or good or bad, 

A single book was all we had,) 

Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 

A stranger to the heathen Nine, 

Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper to our door. 
Lo ! broadening outward as we read, 
To warmer zones the horizon spread 
In panoramic length unrolled 
We saw the marvels that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetos winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow ! 
Welcome to us its week-old news. 
Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death : 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale. 
The latest culprit sent to jail ; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost. 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost. 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street. 
The pulse of life that round us beat ; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow ; 
Wide swung again our ice-loeked door. 
And all the world was ours once more ! 

Clasp, Angel of the backward look 

And folded wings of ashen gray 

And voice of echoes far away. 
The brazen covers of thy book ; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast. 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe ; 
The monographs of outlived years. 
Or smile-illumed or <iim with tears. 

Green hills of life that slope to death. 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall. 
Importunate hours that hours succeed. 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace -with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; 



I hear again the voice that bids 
The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears : 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day I 

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife. 

The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; 
And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 

These Flemish pictures of old days ; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth. 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 

To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 
And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond. 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And, pavising, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



MY TRIUMPH 

The autumn-time has come ; 
On woods that dream of bloom, 
And over purpling vines, 
The low sun fainter shines. 

The aster-flower is failing. 
The hazel's gold is paling ; 
Yet overhead more near 
The eternal stars appear ! 

And present gratitude 
Insures the future's good, 
And for the things I see 
I trust the things to be ; 

That in the paths untrod, 
And the long days of God, 
My feet shall still be led, 
My heart be comforted. 

O living friends who love me 2 

dear ones gone above me I 
Careless of other fame, 

1 leave to you my name. 



IN SCHOOL-DAYS 



407 



Hide it from idle praises, 


Parcel and part of all, 


Save it from evil phrases : 


I keep the festival. 


Why, when dear lips that spake it 


Fore-reach the good to be, 


Are dumb, should strangers wake it ? 


And share the victory. 


Let the thick curtain fall ; 


I feel the earth move sunward. 


I better know than all 


I join the great march onward, 


How little 1 have gained, 


And take, by faith, while living. 


How vast the uuattained. 


My freehold of thanksgiving. 


Not by the page word-painted 


IN SCHOOL-DAYS 


Let life be banned or sainted : 




Deeper than written scroll 


Still sits the school-house by the road^ 


The colors of the soul. 


A ragged beggar sleeping ; 




Around it still the sumachs grow. 


Sweeter tlian any sung 


And blackberry-vines are creeping. 


My songs that found no tongue ; 




Nobler than any fact 


Within, the master's desk is seen, 


My wish that failed of act. 


Deep scarred by raps official ; 




The warping floor, the battered seats. 


Others shall sing the song, 


The jack-knife's carved initial ; 


Others shall right the wrong, — 




Finish what I begin. 


The charcoal frescos on its wall ; 


And all I fail of win. 


Its door's worn sill, betraying 




The feet that, creeping slow to school. 


What matter, I or they ? 


Went storming out to playing ! 


Mine or another's day, 




So the right word be said 


Long years ago a winter sun 


And life the sweeter made ? 


Shone over it at setting ; 




Lit up its western window-panes. 


Hail to the coming singers ! 
Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 


And low eaves' icy fretting. 




Forward I reach and share 


It touched the tangled golden curls, 


All that they suig and dare. 


And brown eyes full of grieving, 




Of one who still her steps delayed 


The airs of heaven blow o'er me ; 


When all the school were leaving. 


A glory shines before me 




Of what mankind shall be, — 


For near her stood the little boy 


Pure, generous, brave, and free. 


Her childish favor singled : 




His cap pulled low upon a face 


A dream of man and woman 


Where pride and shame were mingled 


Diviner but still human, 




Solving the riddle old. 


Pushing with restless feet the snow 


Shaping the Age of Gold ! 


To right and left, he lingered ; — 
As restlessly her tiny hands 




The love of God and neiglibor ; 


The blue-checked apron fingered. 


An equal-handed labor ; 




The richer life, where beauty 


He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 


Walks liaud in hand with duty. 


The soft hand's light caressing. 




And heard the tremble of her voice. 


Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 


As if a fault confessing. 


The joy of unborn peoples ! 




Sound, trumpets far off blown, 


" I 'm sorry that I spelt the word -. 


Your triumph is my own ! 


1 hate to go above you, 



4o8 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, — 


How hushed the hiss of party hate. 


" Because, you see, I love you ! " 


The clamor of the throng ! 




How old, harsh voices of debate 


Still memory to a gray-haired man 


Flow into rhythmic song ! 


That sweet child-face is showing. 




Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 


Methinks the spirit's temper grows 


Have forty years been growing ! 


Too soft in this still air ; 




Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 


He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 


Of needed watch and prayer. 


How few who pass above him 




Lament their triumph and his loss. 


The bark by tempest vainly tossed 


Like her, — because they love him. 


May founder in the calm. 




And he who braved tlie polar frost 




Faint by the isles of balm. 


MY BIRTHDAY 






Better than self-indulgent years 


Beneath the moonlight and the snow 


The outflung heart of youth, 


Lies dead my latest year ; 


Than pleasant songs in idle ears 


The winter winds are wailing low 


The tumult of the truth. 


Its dirges in my ear. 






Rest for the weary hands is good, 


I grieve not with the moaning wind 


And love for hearts that pine, 


As if a loss befell ; 


But let the manly habitude 


Before me, even as behind, 


Of upright souls be mine. 


God is, and all is well ! 






Let winds that blow from heaven refresh, 


His light shines on me from above, 


Dear Lord, the languid air ; 


His low voice speaks within, — 


And let the weakness of the flesh 


The patience of immortal love 


Thy strength of spirit share. 


Out wearying mortal sin. 






And, if the eye must fail of light. 


Not mindless of the growing years 


The ear forget to hear, 


Of care and loss and pain, 


Make clearer still the spirit's sight. 


My eyes are wet with thankful tears 


More fine the inward ear ! 


For blessings which remain. 






Be near me in mine hours of need 


If dim the gold of life has grown, 


To soothe, or cheer, or warn. 


I will not count it dross, 


And down these slopes of sunset lead 


Nor turn from treasures still my own 


As up the hills of morn ! 


To sigh for lack and loss. 




The years no charm from Nature take ; 


RED RIDING-HOOD 


As sweet her voices call. 




As beautiful her mornings break, 


On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, 


As fair her evenings fall. 


Ridged o'er with many a drifted heap ; 




The wind that through the pine-trees sung 


Love watches o'er my q\iiet ways, 


The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung ; 


Kind voices speak my name, 


While, through the window, frosty-starred. 


And lips that find it hard to praise 


Against the sunset purple barred, 


Are slow, at least, to blame. 


We saw the sombre crow flap by, 




The hawk's gray fleck along the sky. 


How softly ebb the tides of will ! 


The crested blue-jay flitting swift. 


How fields, once lost or won. 


The squirrel poising on the drift, 


Now lie behind me green and still 


Erect, alert, his broad gray tail 


Beneath a level sun ! 


Set to the north wind like a sail. 



AT EVENTIDE 



409 



It came to pass, our little lass, 
With flattened face against the glass. 
And eyes in which the tender dew 
Of pity shone, stood gazing through 
The narrow space her rosy lips 
Had melted from the frost's eclipse : 
"Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue-jays ! 
What is it that the black crow says ? 
The squirrel lifts his little legs 
Because he has no hands, and begs ; 
He 's asking for my nuts, I know : 
May I not feed them on the snow ? " 

Half lost within her boots, her head 
Warm-sheltered in her hood of red. 
Her plaid skirt close about her drawn, 
She floundered down the wintry lawn ; 
Now struggling through the misty veil 
Blown round her by the shrieking gale ; 
Now sinking in a drift so low 
Her scarlet hood could scarcely show 
Its dash of color on the snow. 

She dropped for bird and beast forlorn 
Her little store of nuts and corn. 
And thus her timid guests bespoke : 
"Come, squirrel, from your hollow oak, — 
Come, black old crow, — come, poor blue- 
jay. 
Before your supper 's blown away ! 
Don't be afraid, we all are good ; 
And I 'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood ! " 

O Thou whose care is over all. 
Who heedest even the sparrow's fall, 
Keep in the little maiden's breast 
The pity which is now its guest ! 
Let not her cultured years make less 
The childhood charm of tenderness, 
But let her feel as well as know. 
Nor harder with her polish grow ! 
Unmoved by sentimental grief 
That wails along some printed leaf, 
But prompt with kindly word and deed 
To own the claims of all who need. 
Let the grown woman's self make good 
The promise of Red Riding-Hood ! 



RESPONSE 

On the occasion of my seventieth birthday, in 
1877, I was the recipient of many tokens of 
esteem. The piiblisliers of the Atlantic Monthly 
gave a dinner in my name, and the editor of 



The Literary World gathered in his paper many 
affectionate messages from my associates in 
literature and the cause of human progress. 
The lines which follow were written in acknow- 
ledgment. 

Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low 

rays 
On word and work irrevocably done. 
Life's blending threads of good and ill out- 
spun, 
I hear, O friends ! your words of cheer 

and praise. 
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph 

woke. 
Thanks not the less. With not unglad 

surprise 
I see my life-work through your partial 

eyes; 
Assured, in giving to my home -taught 

songs 
A higher value than of right belongs, 
You do but read between the written lines 
The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. 



AT EVENTIDE 

Poor and inadequate the shadow-play 
Of gain and loss, of waking and of 

dream. 
Against life's solemn background needs 
must seem 
At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfuUy, 
I call to mind the fountains by the way, 
The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the 

spray. 
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of 

giving 
And of receiving, the great boon of liv- 
ing 
In grand historic years when Liberty 
Had need of word and work, quick sympa- 
thies 
For all who fail and suffer, song's relief. 
Nature's uneloying loveliness ; and chief, 
The kind restraining hand of Providence, 
The inward witness, the assuring sense 
Of an Eternal Good wliich overlies 
The sorrow of the world. Love which oufr 
lives 



4IO 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



All sin and wrong, Compassion which for- 
gives 

To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear 
eyes 

Through lapse and failure look to the in- 
tent, 

And judge our frailty by the life we meant. 



VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE 

The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at 
West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes ; and to 
its former guests these somewhat careless 
rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of 
pleasant summers and autumns on the banks 
of the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author 
himself they have a special interest from the 
fact that they were written, or improvised, 
under the eye and for the amusement of a be- 
loved invalid friend, whose last earthly sunsets 
faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee 
and Sandwich. 

A SHALLOW stream, from fountains 
Deep in the Sandwich mountains, 

Rau lakeward Bearcamp River ; 
And between its flood-torn shores, 
Sped by sail or urged by oars, 

No keel had vexed it ever. 

Alone the dead trees yielding 
To the dull axe Time is wielding, 

The shy mink and the otter, 
And golden leaves and red, 
By countless autumns slied, 

Had floated down its water. 

From the gray rocks of Cape Ann, 
Came a skilled seafaring man, 

With his dory, to the right place ; 
Over hill and plain he brought her, 
Where the boatless Bearcamp water 

Comes winding down from White-Face. 

Quoth the skipper : " Ere she floats forth, 
I 'm sure my pretty boat 's worth, 

At least, a name as pretty." 
On her painted side he wrote it. 
And the flag that o'er her floated 

Bore aloft the name of Jettie. 

On a radiant mom of summer, 
Elder guest and latest comer 

Saw her wed the Bearcamp water ; 
Heard the name the skipper gave her. 



And the answer to the favor 

From the Bay State's graceful daughtet 

Then a singer, richly gifted. 
Her charmed voice uplifted ; 

And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow 
Listened, dumb with envious pain. 
To the clear and sweet refrain 

Whose notes they could not borrow. 

Then the skipper plied his oar. 
And from off the shelving shore, 

Glided out the strange explorer ; 
Floating on, she knew not whither, — 
The tawny sands beneath her. 

The great hills watching o'er her. 

On, where the stream flows quiet 
As the meadows' margins by it, 

Or widens out to boi'row a 
New life from that wild water, 
The mountain giant's daughter, 

The pine-besung Chocorua. 

Or, mid the tangling cumber 
And pack of mountain lumber 

Tliat spring floods downward force. 
Over sunken snag, and bar 
Where the grating shallows are, 

The good boat held her course. 

Under the pine-dark highlands. 
Around the vine-hung islands, 

She ploughed her crooked furrow ; 
And her rippling and her lurches 
Scared the river eels and perches. 

And the musk-rat in his burrow. 

Every sober clam below her. 
Every sage and grave pearl-grower. 

Shut his rusty valves the tighter ; 
Crow called to crow complaining, 
And old tortoises sat craning 

Their leathern necks to sight her. 

So, to where the still lake glasses 
The misty mountain masses 

Rising dim and distant northward. 
And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures, 
Low shores, and dead pine spectres. 

Blends the skyward and the earthward. 

On she glided, overladen, 
With merry man and maiden 

Sending back their song and laughter, — 



MY TRUST 



411 



While, perchance, a phantom crew, 


That, safe from snag and fall 


In a ghostly birch canoe, 


And siren-liaunted islet. 


Paddled dumb and swiftly after ! 


And rock, the Unseen Pilot 




May guide us one and all. 


And the bear on Ossipee 




Climbed the topmost crag to see 




The strange tiling drifting under ; 


MY TRUST 


And, through the haze of August, 




Passaconaway and Faugus 


A PICTURE memory brings to me : 


Looked down in sleepy wonder. 


I look across the years and see 




Myself beside my mother's knee. 


All the pines that o'er her hung 




In mimic sea-tones sung 


I feel her gentle hand restrain 


The song familiar to her ; 


My selfish moods, and know again 


And the maples leaned to screen her, 


A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. 


And the meadow-grass seemed greener, 




And the breeze more soft to woo her. 


But wiser now, a man gray grown. 




My childhood's needs are better known, 


The lone stream mystery-haunted 


My mother's chastening love I own. 


To her the freedom granted 




To scan its eveiy feature. 


Gray grown, but in our Father's sight 


Till new and old were blended, 


A child still groping for the light 


And round them both extended 


To read His works and ways aright. 


The loving arms of Nature. 






I wait, in His good time to see 


Of these hills the little vessel 


That as my mother dealt with me 


Henceforth is part and parcel ; 


So with His children dealeth He. 


And on Bearcamp sliall her log 




Be kept, as if by Georges 


I bow myself beneath His hand : 


Or Grand Menau the surges 


That pain itself was wisely planned 


Tossed her skipper through the fog. 


I feel, and partly understand. 


And I, who, half in sadness, 


The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, 


Recall the morning gladness 


The sweet pains of self-sacrifice. 


Of life, at evening time. 


I woiUd not have them otherwise. 


By chance, onlooking idly. 




Apart from all so widely. 


And what were life and death if sin 


Have set her voyage to rhyme. 


Knew not the dread rebuke within, 




The pang of merciful discipline ? 


Dies now the gay persistence 




Of song and laugh, in distance ; 


Not with thy proud despair of old. 


Alone with me remaining 


Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould ! 


The stream, the quiet meadow, 


Pleasure and pain alike I hold. 


The hills in shine and shadow. 




The sombre pines complaining. 


I suffer \vith no vain pretence 




Of triumph over flesh and sense. 


And, musing here, I dream 


Yet trust the grievous providence, 


Of voyagers on a stream 




From whence is no returning, 


How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, 


Under sealed orders going, 


By ways I cannot comprehend, 


Looking forward little knowing. 


To some unguessed benignant end ; 


Looking back with idle yearning. 






That every loss and lapse may gain 


And I pray that every venture 


The clear-aired heights by steps of pain. 


The port of peace may enter, 


And never cross is borne in vain. 



412 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



A NAME 

Addressed to my grand-nephew, Greenleaf 
Whittier Pickard. Jonathan Greenleaf, in A 
Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family , says briefly: 
" From all that can be gathered, it is believed 
that the ancestors of the Greenleaf family were 
Huguenots, who left France on account of their 
religious principles some time in the course of 
the sixteenth century, and settled in England. 
The name was probably translated from the 
French Feuillevert," 

The name the Gallic exile bore, 
St. Malo ! from thy ancient mart, 

Became upon our Western shore 
Greenleaf for Feuillevert. 

A name to hear in soft accord 
Of leaves by light winds overrun, 

Or read, upon the greening sward 
Of May, in shade and sun. 

The name my infant ear first heard 
Breathed softly with a mother's kiss ; 

His mother's own, no tenderer word 
My father spake than this. 

No child have I to bear it on ; 

Be thou its keeper ; let it take 
From gifts well used and duty done 

New beauty for thy sake. 

The fair ideals that outran 

My halting footsteps seek and find — 
The flawless symmetry of man, 

The poise of heart and mind. 

Stand firmly where I felt the sway 
Of every wing that fancy flew, 

See clearly where I groped my way. 
Nor real from seeming knew. 

And wisely choose, and bravely hold 
Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown, 

Like the stout Huguenot of old 
Whose name to thee comes down. 

As Marot's songs made glad the heart 
Of that lone exile, haply mine 

May in life's heavy hours impart 
Some strength and hope to thine. 

Yet when did Age transfer to Youth 
The hard-gained lessons of its day ? 



Each lip must learn the taste of truth, 
Each foot must feel its way. 

We cannot hold the hands of choice 
That touch or shun life's fateful keys ; 

The whisper of the inward voice 
Is more than homilies. 

Dear boy ! for whom the flowers are born, 
Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing. 

What can my evening give to morn, 
My winter to thy spring ! 

A life not void of pure intent. 

With small desert of praise or blame, 

The love I felt, the good I meant, 
I leave thee with my name. 

GREETING 

Originally prefixed to the volume, The King^s 
Missive and other Poems. [Entitled there, The 
Prelude.] 

I SPREAD a scanty board too late ; 
The old-time guests for whom I wait 

Come few and slow, methinks, to-day. 
Ah ! who could hear my messages 
Across the dim unsounded seas 

On which so many have sailed away I 

Come, then, old friends, who linger yet, 
And let us meet, as we have met. 

Once more beneath this low sunshine ; 
And grateful for the good we 've known, 
The riddles solved, the ills outgrown, 

Shake hands upon the border line. 

The favor, asked too oft before. 
From your indulgent ears, once more 

I crave, and, if belated lays 
To slower, feebler measures move. 
The silent sympathy of love 

To me is dearer now than praise. 

And ye, O younger friends, for whom 
My hearth and heart keep open room, 

Come smiling through the shadows long, 
Be with me while the sun goes down. 
And with your cheerful voices drown 

The minor of my even-song. 

For, equal through the day and night. 
The wise Eternal oversight 

And love and power and righteous will 



ABRAM MORRISON 



413 



Remain : the law of destiny, 


" If, of the Law's stone table, 


The best for each and all must be, 


To hold he scarce was able 


And life its promise shall fulfil. 


The first great precept fast. 




He kept for man the last. 


AN AUTOGRAPH 






" Through mortal lapse and dulness 


I WRITE my name as one, 


What lacks the Eternal Fulness, 


On sands by waves o'errun 


If still our weakness can 


Or winter's frosted pane, 


Love Him in loving man ? 


Traces a record vain. 






" Age brought him no despairing 


Oblivion's blankness claims 


Of the world's future faring ; 


Wiser and better names, 


In human nature still 


And well my own may pass 


He found more good than ill. 


As from the strand or glass. 






" To all who dumbly suffered, 


Wash on, waves of time ! 


His tongue and pen he offered ; 


Melt, noons, the frosty rime I 


His life was not his own. 


Welcome the shadow vast, 


Nor lived for self alone. 


The silence that shall last ! 






" Hater of din and riot 


When I and all who know 


He lived in days unquiet ; 


And love me vanish so. 


And, lover of all beauty, 


What harm to them or me 


Trod the hard ways of duty. 


W^ill the lost memory be ? 






" He meant no wrong to any 


If any words of mine. 


He sought the good of many, 


Through right of life divine. 


Yet knew both sin and folly, — 


Remain, what matters it 


May God forgive him wholly ! " 


Whose hand the message writ ? 




Why should the " crowner's quest " 
Sit on my worst or best ? 


ABRAM MORRISON 


Why should the showman claim 




The poor ghost of my name ? 


'Midst the men and things which will 




Haunt an old man's memory still. 


Yet, as when dies a sound 


Drollest, quaintest of them all. 


Its spectre lingers round. 


With a boy's laugh I recall 


Haply my spent life will 


Good old Abram Morrison. 


Leave some faint echo still. 






When the Grist and Rolling Mill 


A whisper giving breath 


Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, 


Of praise or blame to death. 


And the old red school-house stood 


Soothing or saddening such 


Midway in the Powow's flood. 


As loved the living much. 


Here dwelt Abram Morrison. 


Therefore with yearnings vain 


From the Beach to far beyond 


And fond I still would fain 


Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, 


A kindly judgment seek, 


Marvellous to our tough old stock, 


A tender thought bespeak. 


Chips 0' the Anglo-Saxon block. 




Seemed the Celtic Morrison. 


And, while my words are read. 




Let this at least be said : 


Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all 


" Whate'er his life's defeatures. 


Only knew the Yankee drawl. 


He loved his fellow-creatures. 


Never brogue was heard till when, 



414 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Foremost of his countrymen, 

Hither came Friend Morrison ; 

Yankee born, of alien blood, 
Kin of his had well withstood 
Pope and King with pike and ball 
Under Berry's leaguered wall, 
As became the Morrisons. 

Wandering down from Nutfield woods 
With his household and his goods, 
Never was it clearly told 
How within our quiet fold 
Came to be a Morrison. 

Once a soldier, blame him not 
That the Quaker he forgot, 
When, to think of battles won, 
And the red-coats on the run, 

Laughed aloud Friend Morrison. 

From gray Lewis over sea 
Bore his sires their family tree, 
On the rugged boughs of it 
Grafting Irish mirth and wit. 

And the brogue of Morrison. 

Half a genius, quick to plan, 
Blundering like an Irishman, 
But with canny shrewdness lent 
By liis far-otf Scotch descent. 
Such was Abram Morrison. 

Back and forth to daily meals. 
Rode his cherished pig on wheels, 

- And to all who came to see, 

" Aisier for the pig an' me. 

Sure it is," said Morrison. 

Simple-hearted, boy o'ergrown, 
With a humor quite his own, 
Of our sober-stepping ways. 
Speech and look and cautious phrase, 
Slow to learn was Morrison. 

Much we loved his stories told 
Of a country strange and old. 
Where the fairies danced till dawn, 
And tlie goblin Leprecaun 

Looked, we thought, like Morrison. 

Or wild tales of feud and fight. 
Witch and troll and second sight 
Whispered still where Stornoway 



Looks across its stormy bay. 

Once the home of Morrisons. 

First was he to sing the praise 
Of the Powow's winding ways ; 
And our straggling village took 
City grandeur to the look 
Of its poet Morrison. 

All his words have perished. Shame 
On the saddle-bags of Fame, 
That they bring not to our time 
One poor couplet of the rhyme 
Made by Abram Morrison I 

When, on calm and fair First Days, 
Rattled down our one-horse chaise. 
Through tlie blossomed apple-boughs 
To the old brown meeting-house, 
There was Abram Morrison. 

Underneath his hat's broad brim 
Peered the queer old face of him ; 
And with Irish jauntiness 
Swung the coat-tails of the dress 
Worn by Abram Morrison. 

Still, in memory, on his feet. 
Leaning o'er the elders' seat, 
Mingling with a solemn drone, 
Celtic accents all his own, 
Rises Abram Morrison. 

' Don't," he 's pleading, " don't ye go, 
Dear young friends, to sight and show ; 
Don't run after elephants, 
Learned pigs and presidents 

And the likes ! " said Morrison. 

On his well-worn theme intent. 
Simple, child-like, innocent, 
Heaven forgive the half-checked smile 
Of our careless boyhood, while 

Listening to Friend Morrison ! 

We have learned in latter days 
Truth may speak in simplest phrase ; 
Tiiat the man is not the less 
For quaint ways and home-spun dress, 
Thanks to Abram Morrison ! 

Not to pander nor to please 
Come the needed homilies. 
With no lofty argument 



A LEGACY 415 


Is the fitting message sent, 

Through such lips as Morrison's. 


Let me not leave, to pain and sadden thee, 
A memory of tears, 


Dead and gone ! But while its track 
Powow keeps to Merrimac, 
While Po Hill is still on guard, 
Looking land and ocean ward, 
They shall tell of Morrison ! 


But pleasant thoughts alone 
Of one who was thy friendship's honored 

guest 
And drank the wine of consolation pressed 

From sorrows of thy own. 


After half a century's lapse, 
We are wiser now, perhaps, 
But we miss our streets amid 
Something which the past has hid. 
Lost with Abram Morrison. 

Gone forever with the queer 
Characters of that old year ! 
Now the many are as one ; 
Broken is the mould that run 
Men like Abram Morrison. 


I leave with thee a sense 
Of hands upheld and trials rendered less — 
The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness 

Its own great recompense ; 

The knowledge that from thine, 
As from the garments of the Master, 

stole 
Calmness and strength, the virtue which 
makes whole 
And heals without a sign ; 


A LEGACY 


Yea more, the assurance strong 
That love, which fails of perfect utterance 

here, 
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere 

With its immortal song. 


Friend of my many years ! 
When the great silence falls, at last, on me. 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

Where Time the measure of his hours 
By changeful bud and blossom keeps, 

And, like a young bride crowned with 
flowers. 
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps ; 

Where, to her poet's turban stone, 

The Spring her gift of flowers imparts, 

Less sweet than those his thoughts have 
sown 
In the warm soil of Persian hearts : 

There sat the stranger, where the shade 
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, 

While in the hot clear heaven delayed 
The long and still and weary day. 

Strange trees and fruits above him hung, 
Strange odors filled the sultry air. 

Strange birds upon the branches swung. 
Strange insect voices murmured there. 

And strange bright blossoms shone around, 
Turned sunward from the shadowy bow- 
ers, 

As if the Gheber's soul had found 
A fitting home in Iran's flowers. 

Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard, 
Awakened feelings new and sad, — ■ 

No Christian garb, nor Christian word. 
Nor church with Sabbath - bell chimes 
glad. 

But Moslem graves, with turban stones. 
And mosque-spires gleaming white, in 
view. 

And graybeard Mollahs in low tones 
Chanting their Koran service through. 

The flowers which smiled on either hand. 
Like tempting fiends, were such as they 

Which once, o'er all that Eastern land, 
As gifts on demon altars lay. 



As if the burning eye of Baal 

The servant of his Conqueror knew, 

From skies which knew no cloudy veil, 
The Sun's hot glances smote him through. 

" Ah me ! " the lonely stranger said, 
" The hope which led my footsteps on. 

And light from heaven around them shed. 
O'er weary wave and waste, is gone ! 

" Where are the harvest fields all white, 
For Truth to thrust her sickle in ? 

Where flock the souls, like doves in flight, 
From the dark hiding-place of sin ? 

" A silent horror broods o'er all, — 
The burden of a hateful spell, — 

The very flowers around recall 
The hoary magi's rites of hell ! 

" And what am I, o'er such a land 
The banner of the Cross to bear ? 

Dear Lord, uphold me with Thy hand, 
Thy strength with human weakness 
share ! " 

He ceased ; for at his very feet 
In mild rebuke a floweret smiled ; 

How thrilled his sinking heart to greet 
The Star-flower of the Virgin's child ! 

Sown by some wandering Frank, it drew 
Its life from alien air and earth, 

And told to Paynim sun and dew 
The story of the Saviour's birth. 

From scorching beams, in kindly mood, 
The Persian plants its beauty screened, 

And on its pagan sisterhood, 

In love, the Christian floweret leaned. 

With tears of joy the wanderer felt 
The darkness of his long despair 

Before that hallowed symbol melt. 

Which God's dear love had nurtured 
there. 



416 



THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN 



417 



From Nature's face, that simple flower 


Where the shrines of foid idols were lighted 


The lines of sin and sadness swept ; 


on high. 


And Magian pile and Payuim bower 


And wantonness tempted the lust of the 


In peace like that of Eden slept. 


eye; 




Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, loath- 


Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old, 


some, abhorred, 


Looked holy through the sunset air ; 


The blasphemer scoifed at the name of the 


And, angel-like, the Muezzin told 


Lord. 


From tower and mosque the hour of 




prayer. 


Hark ! the growl of the thmider, — the 




quaking of earth ! 


With cheerful steps, the morrow's dawn 


Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to the 


From Shiraz saw the stranger part ; 


mirth ! 


The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born 


The black sky has opened ; there 's flame 


Still blooming in his hopefiU heart ! 


in the air ; 




The red arm of vengeance is lifted and 
bare! 


THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 


Then the shriek of the dying rose wild 




where the song 


" Get ye up from the wrath of God's ter- 


And the low tone of love had been whis- 


rible day ! 


pered along ; 


Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away ! 


For the fierce flames went lightly o'er pal- 


'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness 


ace and bower. 


of time, 


Like the red tonguesnpf demons, to blast 


And vengeance shall gather the harvest of 
crime ! 


and devour ! 




Down, down on the fallen the red ruin 


The warning was spoken — the righteous 


rained. 


had gone, 


And the reveller sank with his wine-cup 


And the proud ones of Sodom were feast- 


undrained ; 


ing alone ; 


The foot of the .dancer, the music's loved 


All gay was the banquet — the revel was 


thrill. 


long. 


And the shout and the laughter grew sud- 


With the pouring of wine and the breath- 


denly still. 


ing of song. 






The last throb of anguish was fearfully 


'T was an evening of beauty ; the air was 


given ; 


perfume. 


The last eye glared forth in its madness on 


The earth was all greenness, the trees were 


Heaven ! 


all bloom ; 


The last groan of horror rose wildly and 


And softly the delicate viol was heard, 


vain, 


Like the murmur of love or the notes of a 


And death brooded over the pride of the 


bird. 


Plain ! 


And beautiful maidens moved down in the 




dance. 
With the magic of motion and sunshine of 


THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN 


glance ; 




And white arms wreathed lightly, and 


Not always as the whirlwind's rush 


tresses fell free 


On Horeb's mount of fear. 


As the plumage of birds in some tropical 


Not always as the burning bush 


tree. 


To Midian's shepherd seer, 



4i8 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Nor as the awful voice which came 

To Israel's prophet bards, 
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame, 

Nor gift of fearful words, — 

Not always thus, with outward sign 

Of fire or voice from Heaven, 
The message of a truth divine, 

The call of God is given ! 
Awaking in the human heart 

Love for the true and right, — 
Zeal for the Christian's better part, 

Strength for the Christian's fight. 

Nor unto manhood's heart alone 

The holy influence steals : 
Warm with a rapture not its own, 

The heart of woman feels ! 
As she who by Samaria's wall 

The Saviour's errand sought, — 
As those who with the fervent Paul 

And meek Aquila wrought : 

Or those meek ones whose martyrdom 

Rome's gathered ^grandeur saw : 
Or those wlio in thfeir Alpine home 

Braved the Crusader's war. 
When tlie green Vaudois, trembling, heard. 

Through all its vales of death. 
The martyr's song of triumph poured 

From woman's failing breath. 

And gently, by a thousand things 

Which o'er our spirits pass. 
Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings. 

Or vapors o'er a glass. 
Leaving their token strange and new 

Of music or of shade. 
The summons to the right and true 

And merciful 



Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light 

Flash o'er thy waiting mind. 
Unfolding to thy mental sight 

The wants of human-kind ; 
If, brooding over human grief, 

The earnest wish is known 
To soothe and gladden with relief 

An anguish not thine own ; 

Though heralded with naught of fear, 

Or outward sign or show ; 
Though only to the inward ear 

It whispers soft and low ; 



Though dropping, as the manna fell, 

Unseen, yet from above. 
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well, — 

Thy Father's call of love ! 

THE CRUCIFIXION 

Sunlight upon Judaea's hills ! 

And on the waves of Galilee ; 
On Jordan's stream, and on the rills 

That feed the dead and sleeping sea I 
Most freshly from the green wood springs 
The light breeze on its scented wings ; 
And gayly quiver in the sun 
The cedar tops of Lebanon ! 

A few more hours, — a change hath come ! 

The sky is dark without a cloud ! 
The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb. 

And proud knees unto earth are bowed. 
A change is on the hill of Death, 
The helmed watchers pant for breath, 
And turn with wild and maniac eyes 
From the dark scene of sacrifice ! 

That Sacrifice ! — the death of Him, — 

The Christ of God, the holy One ! 
Well may the conscious Heaven grow dim, 

And blacken the beholding Sun. 
The wonted light hath fled away. 
Night settles on the middle day, 
And earthquake from his caverned bed 
Is waking with a thrill of dread ! 

The dead are waking underneath ! 

Their prison door is rent away ! 
And, ghastly with the seal of death 

They wander in the eye of day ! 
The temple of the Cherubim, 
The House of God is cold and dim ; 
A curse is on its trembling walls. 
Its mighty veil asunder falls ! 

Well may the cavern-depths of Earth 
Be shaken, and her mountains nod ; 

Well may the sheeted dead come forth 
To see the suffering son of God ! 

Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, 

And shadows veil the Cherubim, 

When He, the chosen one of Heaven, 

A sacrifice for guilt is given ! 

And shall the sinful heart, alone, 
Behold unmoved the fearful hour. 



PALESTINE 



419 



When Nature trembled on ber throne, 
And Death resigned his iron power ? 
Oh, shall the heart — whose sinfulness 
Gave keenness to His sore distress. 
And added to His tears of blood — 
Refuse its trembling gratitude ? 



PALESTINE 

Blest land of Jud.-ea ! thrice hallowed of 

song, 
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like 

throng ; 
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of 

thy sea, 
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with 

thee. 

With the eye of a spirit I look on that 

shore 
Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered 

before ; 
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the 

sod 
Made bright by the steps of the angels of 

God. 

Blue sea of the hills ! in my spirit I hear 
Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my 

ear ; 
Where the Lowly and Just with the people 

sat down. 
And thy spray on the dust of His sandals 

was thrown. 

Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green, 
And the desolate hills of the wild Gada- 

rene ; 
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to 

see 
The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee ! 

Hark, a sound in the valley ! where, swollen 

and strong. 
Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along ; 
Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah 

in vain, 
And thy torrent grew dark with the blood 

of the slain. 

There down from his mountains stern Zeb- 

nlon came, 
And Naphthali's stag, with his eyeballs of 

flame, 



And the chariots of Jabin rolled harmlessly 

on. 
For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's 

son ! 

There sleep the still rocks and the caverns 
wliich rang 

To the song which the beautiful prophetess 
sang, 

When the princes of Issachar stood by her 
side. 

And the shout of a host in its triumph re- 
plied. 

Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen, 
With the mountains around, and the valleys 

between ; 
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and 

there 
The song of the angels rose sweet on the 

air. 

And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still 

throw 
Their shadows at noon on the ruins below ', 
But where are the sisters who hastened to 

greet 
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet ? 

I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring 
trod ; 

I stand where they stood with the chosen of 
God — 

Where His blessing was heard and His les- 
sons were taught, 

Where the blind were restored and the 
healing was wrought. 

Oh, here with His flock the sad Wanderer 

came ; 
These hills He toiled over in grief are the 

same ; 
The founts where He drank by the wayside 

still flow, 
And the same airs are blowing which 

breathed on His brow ! 

And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem 

But with dust on her forehead, and chains 

on her feet ; 
For the crown of her pride to the mocker 

hath gone. 
And the holy Shechinah is dark where it 

shone. 



42 o 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



But wherefore this dream of the earthly 
abode 

Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of 
God? 

Were my spirit but turned from the out- 
ward and dim, 

It could gaze, even uow, on the presence of 
Him! 

Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as 

when. 
In love and in meekness. He moved among 

men ; 
And the voice which breathed peace to the 

waves of the sea 
In the hush of my spirit would whisper to 

me ! 

And what if my feet may not tread where 

He stood. 
Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's 

flood, 
Nor my eyes see the cross which He bowed 

Him to bear, 
Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden 

of prayer. 

Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near 
To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent 

here ; 
And the voice of Thy love is the same even 

now 
As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's brow. 

Oh, the outward hath gone ! but in glory 

and power, 
The spirit surviveth the things of an hour ; 
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame 
On the heart's secret altar is burning the 

same ! 



HYMNS 

FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE 



" Kncore un hytnne, O ma lyre I 
Un hymne pour le Seiffneur, 
tJn hymne dans mon d^Iire, 
Un hymne dans mon bonheur." 

One hymn more, O my lyre I 
Praise to the God above. 
Of joy and life and love. 

Sweeping its strings of fire I 



Oh, who the speed of bird and wind 

And sunbeam's glance will lend to me, 
That, soaring upward, I may find 

My resting-place and home in Thee ? 
Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and 
gloom, 

Adoreth with a fervent flame, — 
Mysterious spirit ! unto whom 

Pertain nor sign nor name ! 

Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go 

Up from the cold and joyless earth, 
Back to the God who bade them flow, 

Whose moving spirit sent them forth. 
But as for me, O God ! for me, 

The lowly creature of Thy will, 
Lingering and sad, I sigh to Thee, 

An earth-bound pilgrim still ! 

Was not my spirit born to shine 

Where yonder stars and suns are glow- 
ing ? 
To breathe with them the light divine 

From God's own holy altar flowing ? 
To be, indeed, whate'er the soul 

In dreanas liath thirsted for so long, — 
A portion of heaven's glorious whole 

Of loveliness and song ? 

Oh, watchers of the stars at night, 

Who breathe their fire, as we the air, — 
Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light, 

Oh, say, is He, the Eternal, there ? 
Bend there around His awful throne 

The seraph's glance, the angel's knee ? 
Or are thy inmost depths His own, 

O wild and mighty sea ? 

Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go ! 

Swift as the eagle's glance of fire, 
Or arrows from the archer's bow. 

To the far aim of your desire ! 
Thought after thought, ye thronging rise, 

Like spring-doves from the startled wood, 
Bearing like them your sacrifice 

Of music unto God ! 

And shall these thoughts of joy and love 

Come back again no more to me ? 
Returning like the patriarch's dove 

Wing-weary from the eternal sea, 
To bear within my longing arms 

The promise-bough of kindlier skies, 
Plucked from the green, immortal palma 

Which shadow Paradise ? 



HYMNS 



421 



All-moving spirit ! freely forth 

At Thy command the strong wind goes : 
Its errand to the passive earth, 

Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose, 
Until it folds its weary wing 

Once more within the hand divine ; 
So, weary from its wandering, 

My spirit turns to Thine ! 

Child of the sea, the mountain stream, 

From its dark caverns, hurries on, 
Ceaseless, by night and morning's beam. 

By evening's star and noontide's sun, 
Until at last it sinks to rest, 

O'erwearied, in the waiting sea, 
And moans upon its mother's breast, — 

So turns my soul to Thee ! 

O Thou who bidst the torrent flow. 

Who lendest wings unto the wind, — 
Mover of all things ! where art Thou ? 

Oh, whither shall I go to find 
The secret of Thy resting-place ? 

Is there no holy wing for me. 
That, soaring, I may search the space 

Of highest heaven for Thee ? 

Oh, would I were as free to rise 

As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne, — 
The arrowy light of sunset skies. 

Or sound, or ray, or star of morn, 
Which melts in heaven at twilight's close, 

Or aught which soars unchecked and free 
Through earth and heaven ; that I might 
lose 

Myself in finding Thee ! 



LE CRI DE L'AME 

" Quand le souffle divin qui flotte sur le luonde." 

When the breath divine is flowing, 
Zephyr-like o'er all things going. 
And, as the touch of viewless fingers. 
Softly on my soul it lingers, 
Open to a breath the liglitest, 
Conscious of a touch the slightest, — 
As some calm, still lake, whereon 
Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan, 
And the glistening water-rings 
Circle round her moving wings : 
When my upward gaze is turning 
Where the stars of heaven are burning 



Through the deep and dark abyss, — 
Flowers of midnight's wilderness. 
Blowing with the evening's breath 
Sweetly in their Maker's path : 
When the breaking day is flushing 
All the east, and light is gushing 
Upward through the horizon's haze, 
Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays, 
Spreading, until all above 
Overflows with joy and love, 
And below, on earth's green bosom, 
All is changed to light and blossom : 

When my waking fancies over 
Forms of brightness flit and hover 
Holy as the seraphs are, 
Who by Zion's fountains wear 
On their foreheads, white and broad, 
" Holiness unto the Lord ! " 
When, inspired with rapture high. 
It would seem a single sigh 
Could a world of love create ; 
That my life could know no date. 
And my eager thoughts could fill 
Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still ! 

Then, O Father ! Thou alone. 

From the shadow of Thy throne, 

To the sighing of my breast 

And its rapture answerest. 

All my thoughts, which, upward winging. 

Bathe where Thy own light is springing, - 

All my yearnings to be free 

Are as echoes answering Thee ! 

Seldom upon lips of mine. 
Father ! rests that name of Thine ; 
Deep within my inmost breast. 
In the secret place of mind, 
Like an awful presence shrined, 
Doth the dread idea rest ! 
Hushed and holy dwells it there, 
Prompter of the silent prayer. 
Lifting up my spirit's eye 
And its faint, but earnest cry, 
From its dark and cold abode. 
Unto Thee, my Guide and God ! 



THE FAMILIST'S HYMN 

The Puritans of New England, even in their 
wilderness home, were not exempted from the 
sectarian contentions which agitated the mo, 
ther country after the downfall of Charles the 



422 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



First, and of the established Episcopacy. The 
Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were banished, 
on pain of death, from the Massachusetts Col- 
ony. One Samuel Gorton, a bold and eloquent 
declaimer, after preaching for a time in Bos- 
ton against the doctrines of the Puritans, and 
declaring that their churches were mere hu- 
man devices, and their sacrament and baptism 
an abomination, was driven out of the juris- 
diction of the colony, and compelled to st'ek a 
residence among the savages. He gathered 
round him a considerable number of converts, 
who, like the primitive Chi'istians, shared all 
things in connnon. His opinions, however, 
were so troublesome to the leading clergy of 
the colony, that they instigated an attack 
upon his '■ Faiuily " by an armed force, which 
seized upon the principal men in it, and 
brought them into Massachusetts, where they 
were sentenced to be kept at hard labor in 
several towns (one only in each town), during 
the pleasure of the General Court, they being 
forbidden, under severe penalties, to utter any 
of their religious sentiments, except to such 
ministers as might labor for their conversion. 
They were unquestionably sincere in their 
opinions, and, whatever may have been their 
errors, deserve to be ranked among those who 
have in all ages suffered for the freedom of 
conscience. 

Father ! to Thy suffering poor 

Strength and grace and faith impart, 
And with Thy own love restore 

Comfort to the broken heart ! 
Oh, the failing ones confirm 

With a holier strength of zeal ! 
Give Thou not the feeble worm 

Helpless to the spoiler's heel ! 

Father ! for Thy holy sake 

We are spoiled and hunted thus ; 
Joyful, for Thy truth we take 

Bonds and burthens unto us : 
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all, 

Weary with our daily task, 
That Thy truth may never fall 

Through our weakness. Lord, we ask. 

Round our fired and wasted homes 

Flits the forest-bird unscared, 
And at noon the wild beast comes 

Where our frugal meal was shared ; 
For the song of praises there 

Shrieks the crow the livelong day ; 
For the sound of evening prayer 

Howls the evil beast of prey. 



Sweet the songs we loved to sing 

Underneath Thy holy sky ; 
Words and tones that used to bring 

Tears of joy in every eye ; 
Dear the wrestling hours of prayer, 

When we gathered knee to knee, 
Blameless youth and hoary hair, 

Bowed, O God, alone to Thee. 

As Thine early children, Lord, 

Shared their wealth and daily bread. 
Even so, with one accord. 

We, in love, each other fed. 
Not with US the miser's hoard. 

Not with us his grasping hand; 
Equal round a common board. 

Drew our meek and brother baud ! 

Safe our quiet Eden lay 

When the war-whoop stirred the laud 
And the Indian turned away 

From our home his bloody hand. 
Well that forest-ranger saw. 

That the burthen and the curse 
Of the white man's cruel law 

Rested also upon us. 

Torn apart, and driven forth 

To our toiling hard and long. 
Father ! from the dust of earth 

Lift we still our grateful song ! 
Grateful, that in bonds we share 

In Thy love which maketh free ; 
Joyful, that the wrongs we bear, 

Draw us nearer, Lord, to Thee ! 

Grateful ! that where'er we toil, — 

By Wachuset's wooded side, 
On Nantucket's sea-worn isle. 

Or by wild Neponset's tide, — 
Still, in spirit, we are near. 

And our evening hymus, which rise 
Separate and discordant here, 

Meet and mingle in the skies ! 

Let the scoffer scorn and mock. 

Let the proud and evil priest 
Rob the needy of his flock. 

For his wine-cup and his feast, — 
Redden not Thy bolts in store 

Tlirough the blackness of Thy skies 7 
For the sighing of the poor 

Wilt Thou not, at length, arise ? 



EZEKIEL 



423 



Worn and wasted, oh ! how long 

Shall thy trodden poor complain ? 
In Thy name they bear the wrong, 

In Thy cause the bonds of pain ! 
Melt oppression's heart of steel, 

Let the haughty priesthood see, 
And their blinded followers feel. 

That in us they mock at Thee I 

In Thy time, O Lord of hosts. 

Stretch abroad that hand to save 
Whicli of old, on Egypt's coasts. 

Smote apart the Red Sea's wave ! 
Lead us from this evil land, 

From the spoiler set us free. 
And once more our gathered band. 

Heart to heart, shall worship Thee ! 



EZEKIEL 



They hear Thee not, O God ! nor see ; 

Beneath Thy rod they mock at Thee ; 

The princes of our ancient line 

Lie drunken with Assyrian wine ; 

The priests around Thy altar speak 

The false words which their hearers seek ; 

And hymns which Chaldea's wanton maids 

Have sung in Dura's idol-shades 

Are with the Levites' chant ascending, 

With Ziou's holiest anthems blending ! 

On Israel's bleeding bosom set. 

The heathen heel is crushing yet ; 

The towers upon our holy hill 

Echo Chaldean footsteps still. 

Our wasted shrines, — who weeps for 

them ? 
Who mourneth for Jerusalem ? 
Who turneth from his gains away ? 
Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray ? 
Who, leaving feast and purpling cup. 
Takes Ziou's lamentation up ? 

A sad and thoughtful youth, T went 
With Israel's early banishment ; 
And where the sullen Chebar crept, 
The ritual of my fathers kept. 
The water for the trench I drew. 
The firstling of the flock I slew, 
And, standing at the altar's side, 
I shared the Levites' lingering pride, 
That still, amidst her mocking foes, 
The smoke of Ziou's offering rose. 



In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame, 
The Spirit of the Highest came ! 
Before mine eyes a vision passed, 
A glory terrible and vast ; 
With dreadful eyes of living things, 
And sounding sweep of angel wings. 
With circling light and sapphire throne, 
And flame-like form of One thereon. 
And voice of that dread Likeness sent 
Down from the crystal firmament ! 

Tlie burden of a prophet's power 

Fell on me in that fearful hour ; 

From off unutterable woes 

The curtain of the future rose ; 

I saw far down the coming time 

The fiery chastisement of crime ; 

With noise of mingling hosts, and jar 

Of falling towers and shouts of war, 

I saw the nations rise and fall. 

Like fire-gleams on my tent's white wall. 

In dream and trance, I saw the slain 
Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain. 
I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre 
Swept over by the spoiler's fire ; 
And heard the low, expiring moan 
Of Edom on his rocky throne ; 
And, woe is me ! the wild lament 
From Zion's desolation sent ; 
And felt within my heart each blow 
Which laid her holy places low. 

In bonds and sorrow, day by day. 

Before the pictured tile I lay ; 

And there, as in a mirror, saw 

The coming of Assyria's war ; 

Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass 

Like locusts through Bethhoron's grass ; 

I saw them draw their stormy hem 

Of battle romid Jerusalem ; 

And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail 

Blend with the victor-trump of Baal ! 

Who trembled at my warning word ? 
Who owned the prophet of the Lord ? 
How mocked the rude, how scoffed the 

vile, 
How stung the Levites' scornful smile. 
As o'er my spirit, dark and slow. 
The shadow crept of Israel's woe 
As if the angel's mournful roll 
Had left its record on my soul. 
And traced in lines of darkness there 
The picture of its great despair 1 



424 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Yet ever at the hour I feel 
My lips in prophecy unseal. 
Prince, priest, and Levite gather near, 
And Salem's daughters haste to hear, 
On Chebar's waste and alien shore, 
The harp of Judah swept once more. 
They listen, as in Babel's throng 
The Chaldeans to the dancer's song, 
Or wild sabbeka's nightly play, 
As careless and as vaiu as they. 



And thus, O Prophet-bard of old, 
Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told ! 
The same which earth's unwelcome seers 
Have felt in all succeeding years. 
Sport of the changeful multitude. 
Nor calmly heard nor understood, 
Their song has seemed a trick of art. 
Their warnings but the actor's part. 
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will, 
The world requites its prophets still. 

So was it when the Holy One 
The garments of the Hesh put on ! 
Men followed where the Highest led 
For common gifts of daily bread. 
And gross of ear, of vision dim, 
Owned not the Godlike power of Him. 
Vain as a dreamer's words to them 
His wail above Jerusalem, 
And meaningless the watch He kept 
Through which His weak disciples slept. 

Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art, 
For God's great purpose set apart. 
Before whose far-discerning eyes. 
The Future as the Present lies ! 
Beyond a narrow-bounded age 
Stretches thy prophet-heritage, 
Through Heaven's vast spaces angel-trod. 
And through the eternal years of God ! 
Thy audience, worlds ! — all things to be 
The witness of the Truth in thee ! 



WHAT THE VOICE SAID 

Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, 
" Lord ! " I cried in sudden ire, 

" From Thy right hand, clothed with thun- 
der, 
Shake the bolted fire ! 



" Love is lost, and Faith is dying ; 
With tlie brute the man is sold ; 
And the dropping blood of labor 
Hardens into gold. 

" Here the dying wail of Famine, 
There the battle's groan of pain ; 
And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon 
Reaping men like grain. 

"'Where is God, that we should feai 
Him ? ' 
Thus the earth-born Titans say ; 
* God ! if Thou art living, hear us 1 ' 
Thus the weak ones pray." 

" Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding," 
Spake a solemn Voice within ; 

" Weary of our Lord's forbearance, 
Art thou free from sin ? 

" Fearless brow to Him uplifting, 
Canst thou for His thunders call, 
Knowing that to guilt's attraction 
Evermore they fall ? 

" Know'st thou not all germs of evil 
In thy heart await their time ? 
Not thyself, but God's restraining, 
Stays their growth of crime. 

"Couldst thou boast, O child of weakness' 
O'er the sons of wrong and strife, 
Were their strong temptations planted 
In thy path of life ? 

" Thou hast seen two streamlets gushing 
From one fountain, clear and free. 
But by widely varying channels 
Searching for the sea. 

" Glideth one through greenest valleys. 
Kissing them with lips still sweet ; 
One, mad roaring down the mountains, 
Stagnates at their feet. 

" Is it choice whereby the Parsee 
Kneels before his mother's fire ? 
In his black tent did the Tartar 
Choose his wandering sire ? 

" He alone, whose hand is bounding 
Human power and human will, 
Looking through each soul's surrounding, 
Knows its good or ill. 



THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND 



425 



* For thyself, while wrong and sorrow 
Make to thee their strong appeal, 
Coward wert thou not to utter 
What the heart must feel. 

' Earnest words must needs be spoken 

When the warm heart bleeds or burns 
With its scorn of wrong, or pity 
For the wronged, by turns. 

' But, by all thy nature's weakness, 
Hidden faults and follies known, 
Be thou, in rebuking evil. 
Conscious of thine own. 

' Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty 

To thy lips her trumpet set. 
But with harsher blasts shall mingle 

Wailings of regret." 

Cease not. Voice of holy speaking. 
Teacher sent of God, be near. 

Whispering through the day's cool silence. 
Let my spirit hear ! 

So, when thoughts of evil-doers 
Waken scorn, or hatred move, 

Shall a mournful fellow-feeling 
Temper all \vith love. 



THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE 

A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 
God's meekest Angel gently comes : 
No power has he to banish pain, 
Or give us back our lost again ; 
And yet in tenderest love, our dear 
And Heavenly Father sends him here. 

There 's quiet in that Angel's glance. 

There 's rest in his still countenance ! 

He mocks no grief with idle cheer. 

Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear ; 

But ills and woes he may not cure 

He kindly trains us to endure. 

Angel of Patience ! sent to calm 
Our feverish brows with cooling palm ; 
To lay the storms of hope and fear. 
And reconcile life's smile and tear ; 
The throbs of wounded pride to still. 
And make our own our Father's will ! 



O thou who mournest on thy way. 
With longings for the close of day ; 
He walks with thee, that Angel kind, 
And gently whispers, " Be resigned : 
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things well ! " 



THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER 
HUSBAND 

Against the sunset's glowing wall 
The city towers rise black and tall, 
Where Zorah, on its rocky height, 
Stands like an armed man in the light. 

Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain 
Falls like a cloud the night amain. 
And up the hillsides climbing slow 
The barley reapers homeward go. 

Look, dearest ! how our fair child's head 
The sunset light hath hallowed. 
Where at this olive's foot he lies, 
Uplooking to the tranquil skies. 

Oh, while beneath the fervent heat 
Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat, 
I 've watched, with mingled joy and dread, 
Our child upon his grassy bed. 

Joy, which the mother feels alone 
Whose morning hope like mine had flown, 
When to her bosom, over-blessed, 
A dearer life than hers is pressed. 

Dread, for the future dark and still. 
Which shapes our dear one to its will ; 
Forever in his large calm eyes, 
I read a tale of sacrifice. 

The same foreboding awe I felt 
When at the altar's side we knelt. 
And he, who as a pilgrim came, 
Rose, winged and glorious, through the 
flame. 

I slept not, though the wild bees made 
A dreamlike murmuring in the shade, 
And on me the warm-fingered hours 
Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers. 

Before me^ in a vision, rose 

The hosts of Israel's scornful foes, — 



426 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear, 
Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere. 

I heard their boast, and bitter word. 
Their mockery of tlie Hebrew's Lord, 
I saw their hands His ark assail, 
Their feet profane His holy veil. 

No angel down the blue space spoke, 
No thunder from the still sky broke; 
But in their midst, in power and awe. 
Like God's waked wrath, our child I saw ! 

A child no more! — harsh -browed and 

strong, 
He towered a giant in the throng. 
And down his shoulders, broad and bare, 
Swept the black terror of his hair. 

He raised his arm — he smote amain ; 
As round the reaper falls the grain, 
So tlie dark host around hiiu fell, 
So sank the foes of Israel ! 

Again I looked. In sunlight shone 
The towers and domes of Askelon; 
Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd 
Within her idol temple bowed. 

Yet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and blind. 
His arms the massive pillars twined, — 
An eyeless captive, strong with hate. 
He stood there like an evil Fate. 

The red shrines smoked, — the trumpets 

pealed : 
He stooped, — the giant columns reeled; 
Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall. 
And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er all! 

Above the shriek, the crash, the groan 
Of the fallen pride of Askelon, 
I heard, sheer down the echoing sky, 
A voice as of an angel cry, — 

The voice of him, who at our side 
Sat through the golden eventide; 
Of him who, on thy altar's blaze. 
Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise. 

" Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain. 
Gray mother of the mighty slain! 
Rejoice! " it cried, " he vanquisheth! 
The strong in life is strong in death! 



" To him shall Zorah's daughters raise 
Through coming years tlieir hymns of 

praise. 
And gray old men at evening tell 
Of all he wrought for Israel. 

" And they who sing and they who hear 
Alike shall hold thy memory dear. 
And pour their blessings on thy head, 

mother of the mighty dead! " 

It ceased ; and though a sound I heard 
As if great wings the still air stirred, 

1 only saw the barley sheaves 
And hills half hid by olive leaves. 

I bowed mj' face, in awe and fear, 

On the dear child who slumbered near ; 

" With me, as with my only son, 

O God," I said, *' Thy will be done ! " 



MY SOUL AND I 

Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark 

I would question thee, 
Alone in the shadow drear and stark 

With God and me ! 

What, my soul, was thy errand here ? 

Was it mirth or ease. 
Or heaping up dust from year to year ? 

" Nay, none of these ! " 

Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight 

W'hose eye looks still 
And steadily on thee through the night: 

" To do His will ! " 

What hast thou done, O sonl of mine, 

That thou tremblest so ? 
Hast then wrought His task, and kept the 
line 

He bade thee go ? 

What, silent all ! art sad of cheer ? 

Art fearful now ? 
When God seemed far and men were near, 

How brave wert thou ! 

Aha ! thou tremblest ! — well I see 

Thou 'rt craven grown. 
Is it so hard with God and me 

To stand alone ? 



MY SOUL 


AND I 427 


Summon thy sunshine bravery back, 


"Whither I go I cannot tell : 


wretched sprite ! 


That cloud hangs black, 


Let me hear thy voice through this deep 


High as the heaven and deep as hell 


and black 


Across my track. 


Abysmal night. 






" I see its shadow coldly enwrap 


What hast thou %vrought for Right and 


The souls before. 


Truth, 


Sadly they enter it, step by step, 


For God and Man, 


To return no more. 


From the golden hours of bright -eyed 




youth 


" They shrink, they shudder, dear God ! 


To life's mid span ? 


they kneel 




To Thee in prayer. 


Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear, 


They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feel 


But weak and low, 


That it still is there. 


Like far sad umrmurs on my ear 




They come and go. 


"In vain they turn from the dread Be- 




fore 


" I have wrestled stoutly with the Wrong, 


To the Known and Gone ; 


And borne the Right 


For while gazing behind them evermore 


From beneath the footfall of the throng 


Their feet glide on. 


To life and light. 






" Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale faces 


" Wherever Freedom shivered a chain. 


A light begin 


God speed, quoth I ; 


To tremble, as if from holy places 


To Error amidst her shouting train 


And shrines within. 


I gave the lie." 






"And at times methinks their cold lips 


Ah, soul of mine ! ah, soul of mine ! 


move 


Thy deeds are well : 


With hymn and prayer. 


Were they wrought for Truth's sake or for 


As if somewhat of awe, but more of love 


thine ? 


And hope were there. 


My soul, pray tell. 






"I call on the souls who have left the 


" Of all the work my hand hath wrought 


light 


Beneath the sky, 


To reveal their lot ; 


Save a place in kindly human thought. 


I bend mine ear to that wall of night, 


No gain have I." 


And they answer not. 


Go to, go to ! for thy very self 


" But I hear around me sighs of pain 


Thy deeds were done : 


And the cry of fear. 


Thou for fame, the miser for pelf. 


And a sound like the slow sad dropping of 


Your end is one ! 


rain, 




Each drop a tear ! 


And where art thou going, soul of mine ? 




Canst see the end ? 


" Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day 


And whither this troubled life of thine 


I am moving thither : 


Evermore doth tend ? 


I must pass beneath it on my way — 




God pity me ! — whither ? " 


What daunts thee now ? what shakes thee 




so? 


Ah, soul of mine ! so brave and wise 


My sad soul, say. 


In the life-storm loud, 


" I see a cloud like a curtain low 


Fronting so calmly all human eyes 


Hang o'er my way. 


In the sunlit crowd ! 



428 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Now standing apart with God and me 


Linked in sympathy like the keys 


Thou art weakness all, 


Of an organ vast. 


Gazing vainly after the things to be 




Through Death's dread wall. 


Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar ; 




Break but one 


But never for this, never for this 


Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 


Was thy being lent ; 


Through all will run. 


For the craven's fear is but selfishness, 




Like his merriment. 


restless spirit ! wherefore strain 




Beyond thy sphere ? 


Folly and Fear are sisters twain : 


Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, 


One closing her eyes. 


Are now and here. 


The other peopling the dark inane 




With spectral lies. 


Back to thyself is measured well 




All thou hast given ; 


Know well, my soul, God's hand controls 


Thy neiglibor's wrong is thy present hell, 


Whate'er thou fearest ; 


His bliss, thy heaven. 


Round Him in calmest music rolls 




Whate'er thou hearest. 


And in life, in death, in dark and light, 




All are in God's care : 


What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 


Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep of 


And the end He knoweth. 


night. 


And not on a blind and aimless way 


And He is there ! 


The spirit goeth. 






All which is real now remaineth. 


Man sees no future, — a phantom show 


And fadeth never : 


Is alone before him ; 


The hand which upholds it now sustaineth 


Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow, 


The soul forever. 


And flowers bloom o'er him. 






Leaning on Him, make with reverent meek- 


Nothing before, nothing behind ; 


ness 


The steps of Faith 


His own thy will. 


Fall on the seeming void, and find 


And with strength from Him shall thy ut- 


The rock beneath. 


ter weakness 




Life's task fulfil ; 


The Present, the Present is all thou hast 




For thy sure possessing ; 


And that cloud itself, which now before 


Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast 


thee 


Till it gives its blessing. 


Lies dark in view. 




Shall with beams of light from the inner 


Why fear the night? why shrink from 


glory 


Death, 


Be stricken through. 


That phantom wan ? 




There is nothing in heaven or earth be- 


And like meadow mist through autumn's 


neath 


dawn 


Save God and man. 


Uprolling thin. 




Its thickest folds when about thee drawn 


Peopling the shadows we turn from Him 


Let sunlight in. 


And from one another ; 




All is spectral and vague and dim 


Then of what is to be, and of what is 


Save God and our brother ! 


done, 




Why qneriest thou ? 


Like warp and woof all destinies 


The past and the time to be are one. 


Are woven fast. 


And both are now ! 



WORSHIP 



429 



WORSHIP 

Pure relipion and undefiled before God and the Fa- 
ther is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their 
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. 
— James i. 27. 

The Pagan's myths through marble lips 
are spoken, 
Aud ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and 
moan 
Ronnd fane and altar overthrown and 
broken, 
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of 
stone. 

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high 
places, 
The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's 
wood. 
With mothers offering, to the Fiend's 
embraces, 
Bone of their bone, and blood of their 
own blood. 

Red altars, kindling through that night of 
error. 
Smoked with warm blood beneath the 
cruel eye 
Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror, 
Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky ; 

Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting 
All heaven above, and blighting earth 
below. 
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale 
with fasting, 
And man's oblation was his fear and 
woe ! 

Then through great temples swelled the 
dismal moaning 
Of dirge -like music and sepulchral 
prayer ; 
Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols 
droning, 
Swung their white censers in the bur- 
dened air : 

As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor 
Of gums and spices could the Unseen 
One please ; 
As if His ear could bend, with childish 
favor. 
To the poor flattery of the organ keys ! 



Feet red from war-fields trod the church 
aisles holy. 
With trembling reverence : and the op- 
pressor there. 
Kneeling before his priest, abased and 
lowly. 
Crushed human hearts beneath his knee 
of prayer. 

Not such the service the benignant Father 
Requireth at His. earthly children's 
hands : 
Not the poor offering of vain rites, but 
rather 
The simple duty man from man demands. 

For Earth He asks it : the full joy of 
heaven 
Knoweth no change of waning or in- 
crease ; 
The great heart of the Infinite beats even, 
Untroubled flows the river of His peace. 

He asks no taper lights, on high surround- 
ing 
The priestly altar and the saintly grave, 
No dolorous chant nor organ music sound- 

Nor incense clouding up the twilight 
nave. 

For he whom Jesus loved hath truly 
spoken : 
The holier worship which he deigns to 
bless 
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit 
broken, 
And feeds the widow and the fatherless ! 

Types of our human weakness and our sor- 
row ! 
Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones 
dead ? 
Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to 
borrow 
From stranger eyes the home lights 
which have fled ? 

O brother man ! fold to thy heart tLy 
brother ; 
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is 
there ; 
To worship rightly is to love each other. 
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a 
prayer. 



430 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Follow with reverent steps the great exam- 
ple 
Of Him whose holy work was " doing 
good ; " 
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's 
temple, 
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. 

Then shall all shackles fall ; the stormy 

clangor 

Of wild war music o'er the earth shall 

cease ; 

Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, 

And in its ashes plant the tree of peace ! 



THE HOLY LAND 

Paraphrased from the lines in Lamartine's 

Adieu to Marseilles, beginning 

" Je n'ai pas navigu6 sur ToctSan de sable." 

I HAVE not felt, o'er seas of sand, 

The rocking of the desert bark ; 
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand. 

By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark; 
Nor pitched my tent at even-fall. 

On dust where Job of old has lain. 
Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall 

The dream of Jacob o'er again. 

One vast world-page remains unread ; 

How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky. 
How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread. 

How beats the heart with God so nigh ! 
How round gray arch and column lone 

The spirit of the old time broods, 
And sighs in all the winds that moan 

Along the sandy solitudes ! 

In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, 

I have not heard the nations' cries, 
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down 

Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. 
The Christian's prayer I have not said 

In Tadmor's temples of decay. 
Nor startled, with my dreary tread. 

The waste where Memnon's empire lay. 

Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide, 
O Jordan ! heard the low lament, 

Like that sad wail along thy side 

Which Israel's mournful prophet sent ! 

Nor thrilled within that grotto lone 

Where, deep in night, the Bard of Kings 



Felt hands of fire direct his own. 

And sweep for God the conscious strings. 

I have not climbed to Olivet, 

Nor laid me where my Saviour lay, 
And left His trace of tears as yet 

By angel eyes unwept away ; 
Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time, 

The garden where His prayer and groan, 
Wrung by His sorrow and our crime, 

Rose to One listening ear alone. 

I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot 

Where in His mother's arms He lay, 
Nor knelt upon the sacred spot 

Where last His footsteps pressed the 
clay; 
Nor looked on that sad mountain head, 

Nor smote my sinful breast, where wide 
His arms to fold the world He spread. 

And bowed His head to bless — and died ! 



THE REWARD 

Who, looking backward from his man- 
hood's prime. 
Sees not the spectre of his misspent time ? 

And, through the shade 
Of funeral cypress planted thick behind. 
Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind 

From his loved dead ? 

Who bears no trace of passion's evil force ? 
Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Remorse ? 

Who does not cast 
On the thronged pages of his memory's 

book. 
At times, a sad and half-reluctant look. 

Regretful of the past ? 

Alas ! the evil which we fain would shun 
We do, and leave the wished-for good un- 
done : 

Our strength to-day 
Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall ; J 
Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all | 

Are we alway. " 

Yet who, thus looking backward o'er his 

years. 
Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful 

tears. 
If he hath been 
Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, 



INVOCATION 



431 



To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause, 
His fellow-uien ? 

If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in 
A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin ; 

If he hath lent 
Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of 

need, 
Over the suffering, mindless of his creed 

Or home, hath bent ; 

He has not lived in vain, and while he gives 
The praise to Him, in whom he moves and 
lives, 
With thankful heart ; 
He gazes backward, and with hope before. 
Knowing that from his works he never- 
more 
Can henceforth part. 



THE WISH OF TO-DAY 

I ASK not now for gold to gild 

With mocking shine a weary frame ; 

Tlie yearning of the mind is stilled, 
I ask not now for Fame. 

A rose-cloud, dimly seen above. 

Melting in heaven's blue depths away 

Oh, sweet, fond dream of human Love ! 
For thee I may not pray. 

But, bowed in lowliness of mind, 

I make ray humble wishes known ; 
I only ask a will resigned, 

Father, to Thine own ! 

To-day, beneath Thy chastening eye 

1 crave alone for peace and rest, 
Submissive in Thj- hand to lie, 

And feel that it is best. 

A marvel seems the Universe, 
A miracle our Life and Death ; 

A mystery which I cannot pierce, 
Around, above, beneath. 

In vain I task my aching brain, 
Li vain the sage's thought I scan, 

I only feel how weak and vain. 
How poor and blind, is man. 

And now my spirit sighs for home. 
And longs for light whereby to see, 



And, like a weary child, would come, 
O Father, unto Thee ! 

Though oft, like letters traced on sand, 
My weak resolves have passed away. 

In mercy lend Thy helping hand 
Unto my prayer to-day ! 



ALL'S WELL 

The clouds, which rise with thimder, slake 

Our thirsty souls with rain ; 
The blow most dreaded falls to break 

From off our limbs a chain ; 
And wrongs of man to man but make 

Tlie love of God more plain. 
As through the shadowy lens of even 
The eye looks farthest into heaven 
On gleams of star and depths of blue 
The glaring sunshine never knew ! 



INVOCATION 

Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old, 
Formless and void the dead earth rolled ; 
Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind 
To the great lights which o'er it shined ; 
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath, — 
A dumb despair, a wandering death. 

To that dark, weltering horror came 
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame, — 
A breath of life electrical. 
Awakening and transforming all. 
Till beat and thrilled in every part 
The pulses of a living heart. 

Then knew their bounds the land and sea ; 
Tlien smiled the bloom of mead and tree ; 
From flower to moth, from beast to man, 
The quick creative impulse ran ; 
And earth, with life from thee renewed, 
Was in thy holy eyesight good. 

As lost and void, as dark and cold 

And formless as that earth of old ; 

A wandering waste of storm and night, 

Midst spheres of song and realms of light 

A blot upon thy holy sky, 

Untouched, uuwarmed of thee, am I. 

Thou who movest on the deep 

Of spirits, wake my own from sleep I 



432 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Its darkness melt, its coldness warm, 
The lost restore, the ill transform, 
That tiower and fruit henceforth may be 
Its grateful offering, worthy Thee. 



QUESTIONS OF LIFE 

And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name 
was Uriel, gave me an answer, 

And said, Tliy heart hath gone too far in this world, 
and Ihinkest thou to comprehend the way of the Most 
Hipli ? 

Then said I, Yea, my Lord. . . . 

Then said lie unto me, Go thy way, weigh me the 
weisjht of the fire or measure me the blast of the wind, 
or call me again the hour that is past. — 2 Esdras ch. iv. 

A BENDING staff I would not break, 
A feeble faith I would not shake, 
Nor even rashly pluck away 
The error which some truth may stay, 
Whose loss might leave the soul without 
A shield against the shafts of doubt. 

And yet, at times, when over all 

A darker mystery seems to fall, 

(May God forgive the child of dust. 

Who seeks to know, where Faith should 

trust !) 
I raise the questions, old and dark. 
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch. 
And, speech-confounded, build again 
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain. 

I am : how little more I know ! 
Whence came I ? Whither do I go ? 
A centred self, which feels and is ; 
A cry between the silences ; 
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
With sunshine on the hills of life ; 
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
Into the Future from the Past ; 
Between the cradle and the shroud, 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 

Thorough the vastness, arching all, 

I see the great stars rise and fall, 

The rounding seasons come and go. 

The tided oceans ebb and flow ; 

The tokens of a central force, 

Whose circles, in their widening course, 

O'erlap and move the universe ; 

The workings of the law whence spruigs 

The rhythmic harmony of things. 

Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, 

And orbs in heaven the morning star. 



Of all I see, in earth and sky, — 
Star, flower, beast,bird, — what part have I? 
This conscious life, — is it the same 
Which thrills the universal frame. 
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots. 
And mounts the sap from forest roots. 
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells 
When Spring makes green her native dells ? 
How feels the stone the pang of birth, 
Which brings its sparkling prism forth? 
The forest-tree the throb which gives 
The life-blood to its new-born leaves ? 
Do bird and blossom feel, like me, 
Life's many-folded mystery, — 
The wonder which it is to be ? 
Or stand I severed and distinct. 
From Nature's chain of life unlinked ? 
Allied to all, yet not the less 
Prisoned in separate consciousness. 
Alone o'erburdened with a sense 
Of life, and cause, and consequence ? 

In vain to me the Sphinx propounds 
The riddle of her sights and sounds ; 
Back still the vaulted mystery gives 
The echoed question it receives. 
What sings the brook ? What oracle 
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell ? 
What may the wind's low burden be ? 
The meaning of the moaning sea ? 
The hieroglyphics of the stars ? 
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars ? 
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill 
The trick of Nature's cipher still, 

I turn from Nature unto men, 

I ask the stylus and the pen ; 

What sang the bards of old ? What meant 

The prophets of the Orient ? 

The rolls of buried Egypt, hid 

In painted tomb and pyramid ? 

What mean Idumea's arrowy lines. 

Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs ? 

How speaks the primal tliought of man 

From the grim carvings of Copan ? 

Where rests the secret ? Where the keys 

Of the old death-bolted mysteries ? 

Alas ! the dead retain their trust ; 

Dust hath no answer from the dust. 

The great enigma still unguessed. 

Unanswered the eternal quest ; 

I gather up the scattered rays 

Of wisdom in the early days. 

Faint gleams and broken, like the light 



FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS 



433 



Of meteors in a northern night, 
Betraying to the darkling earth 
The unseen sun which gave them birth ; 
I listen to the sibyl's chant, 
The voice of priest and hierophant ; 
I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, 
And what of life and what of death 
The demon taught to Socrates ; 
And what, beneath his garden-trees 
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread, 
The solenm-thoughted Plato said ; 
Nor lack I tokens, great or small, 
Of God's clear light in each and all. 
While holding with more dear regard 
The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, 
The starry pages promiee-lit 
With Christ's Evangel over-writ. 
Thy miracle of life and death, 
O Holy One of Nazareth ! 

On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, 
The circling serpent coils in stone, — 
Type of the endless and unknown ; 
Whereof we seek the clue to find. 
With groping Angers of the blind ! 
Forever sought, and never found, 
We trace that serpent-symbol round 
Our resting-place, our starting bound ! 
Oh, thriftlessness of dream and guess ! 
Oh, wisdom which is foolishness ! 
Why idly seek from outward things 
The answer inward silence brings ? 
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere 
And age, for that which lies so near ? 
Why climb the far-off hills with pain, 
A nearer view of heaven to gain ? 
In lowliest depths of bosky dells 
The hermit Contemplation dwells. 
A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, 
And lotus-twined his silent feet. 
Whence, piercing heaven, with screened 

sight. 
He sees at noon the stars, whose light 
Shall glorify the coming night. 

Here let me pause, my quest forego ; 
Enough for nie to feel and know 
That He in whom the cause and end, 
The past and future, meet and blend, — 
Who, girt witli his Immensities, 
Our vast and star-hung system sees. 
Small as the clustered Pleiades, — 
Moves not alone the heavenly quires. 
But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, 



Guards not archangel feet alone. 

But deigns to guide and keep my own ; 

Speaks not alone the words of fate 

Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, 

But whispers in my spirit's ear. 

In tones of love, or warning fear, 

A language none beside may hear. 

To Him, from wanderings long and wild, 

I come, an over-wearied child. 

In cool and shade His peace to find, 

Like dew-fall settling on my mind. 

Assured that all I know is best. 

And humbly trusting for the rest, 

I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme. 

Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream 

Of power, impersonal and cold, 

Controlling all, itself controlled. 

Maker and slave of iron laws. 

Alike the subject and the cause ; 

From vain philosophies, that try 

The sevenfold gates of mystery, 

And, baffled ever, babble still. 

Word-prodigal of fate and will ; 

From Nature, and her mockery. Art, 

And book and speech of men apart, 

To the still witness in my heart ; 

With reverence waiting to behold 

His Avatflr of love untold. 

The Eternal Beauty new and old ! 



FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS 

In calm and cool and silence, once again 
I find my old accustomed place among 
My brethren, where, perchance, no hu- 
man tongue 
Shall utter words ; where never hymn 

is sung. 
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer 
swung. 
Nor dim light falling through the pictured 

pane ! 
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear 
The still small voice which reached the 

prophet's ear ; 
Read in my heart a still diviner law 
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw ! 
There let me strive with each besetting sin, 
Recall my wandering fancies, and re- 
strain 
The sore disquiet of a restless brain ; 
And, as the path of duty is made plain, 



434 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



may 



walk 



May grace be given that 
therein, 

Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain. 
With backward glances and relnctant tread, 
Making a merit of his coward dread. 

But, cheerful, in the light around me 

thrown. 
Walking as one to pleasant service led ; 
Doing God's will as if it were my own, 
Yet trusting not in mine, but in His 
streno^th alone ! 



TRUST 

The same old baffling questions ! O my 

friend, 
I cannot answer them. In vain I send 
My soul into the dark, where never bum 
The lamps of science, nor the natural 
light 
Of Reason's sim and stars ! I cannot learn 
Their great and solemn meanings, nor dis- 
cern 
The awful secrets of the eyes which turn 
Evermore on us through the day and 

night 
With silent challenge and a dumb de- 
mand, 
Proffering the riddles of the dread un- 
known. 
Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of 
stone, 
Questioning the centuries from their veils 
of sand ! 
I have no answer for myself or thee, 
Save that I learned beside my mother's 

knee ; 
" All is of God that is, and is to be ; 

And God is good." Let this suffice us 

still. 
Resting in childlike trust upon His will 
Who moves to His great ends imthwarted 
by the ill. 



TRINITAS 

At morn I prayed, " I fain would see 
How Three are One, and One is Three 
Read the dark riddle unto me." 

I wandered forth, the sun and air 
I saw bestowed with equal care 
On good and evil, foul and fair. 



No partial favor dropped the rain ; 
Alike the righteous and profane 
Rejoiced above their heading grain. 

And my heart murmured, " Is it meet 
That blindfold Nature thus should treat 
With equal hand the tares and wheat ? " 

A presence melted through my mood, — 
A warmth, a light, a sense of good. 
Like sunshine through a winter wood. 

I saw that presence, mailed complete 
In her white innocence, pause to greet 
A fallen sister of the street. 

Upon her bosom snowy pure 
The lost one clung, as if secure 
From inward guilt or outward lure. 

" Beware ! " I said ; " in this I see 
No gain to her, but loss to thee : 
Who touches pitch defiled must be." 

I passed the haunts of shame and sin. 
And a voice whispered, " Who therein 
Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace 
win ? 

"Who there shall hope and health dis- 
pense, 
And lift the ladder up from thence 
Whose rounds are prayers of penitence ? " 

I said, " No higher life they know ; 
These earth-worms love to have it so. 
Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." 

That night with painful care I read 
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said ; 
The living seeking to the dead ! 

In vain I turned, in weary quest. 

Old pages, where (God give them rest !) 

The poor creed - mongers dreamed and 



And still I prayed, " Lord, let me see 
How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
Read the dark riddle unto me ! " 

Then something whispered, " Dost thou 

pray 
For what thou hast ? This very day 
The Holy Three have crossed thy way. 



"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR 



435 



" Did not the gifts of sun and air 

To good and ill alike declare 

The all-compassionate Father's care ? 

" In the white soul that stooped to raise 

The lost one from her evil ways, 

Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise ! 

" A bodiless Divinity, 

The still small Voice that spake to thee 

Was the Holy Spirit's mystery ! 

" O blind of sight, of faith how small ! 
Father, and Son, and Holy Call ; 
This day thou hast denied them all ! 

" Revealed in love and sacrifice, 
The Holiest passed before thine eyes, 
One and the same, in threefold guise. 

" The equal Father in rain and sun. 
His Christ in the good to evil done, 
His Voice in thy soul ; — and the Three are 
One ! " 

I shut my grave Aquinas fast ; 
The monkish gloss of ages past. 
The schoolman's creed aside I cast. 

And my heart answered, " Lord, I see 
How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
Thy riddle hath been read to me ! ' ' 



THE SISTERS 

A PICTURE BY BARRY 

The shade for me, but over thee 
The lingering sunshine still ; 

As, smiling, to the silent stream 
Comes down the singing rill. 

So come to me, my little one, — 
My years with thee I share. 

And mingle with a sister's love 
A mother's tender care. 

But keep the smile upon thy lip, 

The trust upon thy brow ; 
Since for the dear one God hath called 

We have an angel now. 

Our mother from the fields of heaven 
Shall still her ear incline ; 



Nor need we fear her human love 
Is less for love divine. 

The songs are sweet they sing beneath 

The trees of life so fair. 
But sweetest of the songs of heaven 

Shall be her children's prayer. 

Then, darling, rest upon my breast, 
And teach my heart to lean 

With thy sweet trust upon the arm 
Which folds us both unseen ! 



"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR 

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 
Her stones of emptiness remain ; 

Around her sculptured mystery sweeps 
The lonely waste of Edom's plain. 

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft 
The bow of vengeance turns not back ; 

Of all her myriads none are left 
Along the Wady Mousa's track. 

Clear in the hot Arabian day 

Her arches spring, her statues climb ; 
Unchanged, the graven wonders pay 

No tribute to the spoiler. Time ! 

Unchanged the awful lithograph 
Of power and glory undertrod ; 

Of nations scattered like the chaff 

Blown from the threshing-floor of God. 

Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn 
From Petra's gates with deeper awe, 

To mark afar the burial urn 
Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor ; 

And where upon its ancient guard 

Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet, — 

Looks from its turrets desertward, 

And keeps the watch that God has set. 

The same as when in thunders loud 
It heard the voice of God to man. 

As when it saw in fire and cloud 
The angels walk in Israel's van ! 

Or when from Ezion-Geber's way 
It saw the long procession file, 

And heard the Hebrew timbrels play 
The music of the lordly Nile ; 



436 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Or saw the tabernacle pause, 

Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's wells, 
While Moses graved the sacred laws, 

And Aaron swung his golden bells. 

Rock cf the desert, prophet-sung ! 

How grew its shadowing pile at length, 
A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, 

Of God's eternal love and strength. 

On lip of bard and scroll of seer. 

From age to age went down the name, 

Until the Shiloh's promised year, 

And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came ! 

The path of life we walk to-day 

Is strange as that the Hebrews trod ; 

We need the shadowing rock, as they, — 
We need, like them, the guides of God. 

God send His angels, Cloud and Fire, 
To lead us o'er the desert sand ! 

God give our hearts their long desire. 
His shadow in a weary land ! 



THE OVER-HEART 

For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all 
things : to whom be glory forever ! — Romans xi. 36. 

Above, below, in sky and sod. 

In leaf and spar, in star and man, 
Well might the wise Athenian scan 

The geometric signs of God, 

The measured order of His plan. 

And India's mystics sang aright, 
Of the One Life pervading all, — 
One Being's tidal rise and fall 

In soul and form, in sound and sight, — 
Eternal outflow and recall. 

God is : and man in guilt and fear 
The central fact of Nature owns ; 
Kneels, trembling, by his altar stones. 

And darkly dreams the ghastly smear 
Of blood appeases and atones. 

Guilt shapes the Terror : deep within 
The human heart the secret lies 
Of all the hideous deities ; 

And, painted on a ground of sin. 
The fabled gods of torment rise ! 



And what is He ? The ripe grain nods. 
The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers 

blow ; 
But darker signs His presence show : 

The earthquake and the storm are God's, 
And good and evil interflow. 

O hearts of love ! O souls that turn 
Like sunflowers to the pure and best f 
To you the truth is manifest : 

For they the mind of Christ discern 
Who lean like John upon His breast ! 

In him of whom the sibyl told, 

For,whom the prophet's harp was toned, 
Whose need the sage and magian owned, 

The loving heart of God behold. 

The hope for which the ages groaned ! 

Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
Wherewith mankind have deified 
Their hate, and selfishness, and pride ! 

Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! 

What doth that holy Guide require ? 
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, 
But man a kindly brotherhood, 

Looking, where duty is desire. 
To Him, the beautiful and good. 

Gone be the faithlessness of fear. 

And let the pitying heaven's sweet rain 
Wash out the altar's bloody stain ; 

Tlie law of Hatred disappear, 
The law of Love alone remain. 

How fall the idols false and grim ! 
And lo ! their hideous wreck above 
The emblems of the Lamb and Dove ! 

Man turns from God, not God from him; 
And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love ! 

The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ; 
It yet shall touch His garment's fold, 

And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold. 

The theme befitting angel tongues 
Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. 
O heart of mine ! with reverence own 

The fulness which to it belongs. 

And trust the unknown for the known. 



THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT 



437 



THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT 



"And I sought, whence is Evil : I set before the eye 
of my spirit the whole creation ; whatsoever we see 
therein, — sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral creatures, 

— yea, whatsoever there is we do not see, — angels and 
spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence comes it, 
since God the Good liatli created all things ? Why 
made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His 
Almightiness cause it not to be? These thoughts I 
turned in my miserable lieart, overcharged with most 
gnawing cares." " And, admonished to return to my- 
self, I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being 
my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and mind 
the Light unchangeable. He who knows tlie Truth 
knows what that Light is, and he that knows it knows 
Eternity ! O Truth, who art Eternity ! Love, who art 
Truth ! Eternity, who art Love ! And I belield that 
Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing 
whatsoever evil. From the angel to the worm, from 
tlie first motion to the last, Tliou settest each in its 
place, and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me ! 

— how high art Thou in the highest, how deep in the 
deepest! and Thou never departest from us, and we 
scarcely return to Thee." — Augustine's Soliloquies, 
Book VII. 

The fourteen centuries fall away 
Between us and the Afric saint, 
And at his side we urge, to-day, 
The immemorial quest and old complaint. 

No outward sign to us is given, — 

From sea or earth comes no reply ; 

Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven 

He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky. 

No victory comes of all our strife, — 

Fi-om all we grasp the meaning slips ; 
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life. 
With the old question on her awful lips. 

In paths unknown we hear the feet 
Of fear before, and guilt behind ; 
We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat 
Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind. 

From age to age descends unchecked 

The sad bequest of sire to son, 
The body's taint, the mind's defect ; 
Through every web of life the dark threads 



Oh, why and whither ? God knows all ; 

I only know that He is good. 
And that whatever may befall 
Or here or there, must be the best that 
could. 

Between the dreadful cherubim 
A Father's face I still discern, 



As Moses looked of old on Him, 
And saw His glory into goodness turn f 

For He is merciful as just ; 

And so, by faith correcting sight, 
I bow before His will, and trust 
Howe'er they seem He doeth all things 
right ; 

And dare to hope that He will make 

The rugged smooth, the doubtful plain ; 
His mercy never quite forsake ; 
His healing visit every realm of pain ; 

That suffering is not His revenge 

Upon His creatures weak and frail, 
Sent on a pathway new and strange 
With feet that wander and with eyes that 
fail; 

That, o'er the crucible of pain. 

Watches the tender eye of Love 
The slow transmuting of the chain 
Whose links are iron below to gold above 1 

Ah me ! we doubt the shining skies. 

Seen through our shadows of offence, 
And drown with our poor childish cries 
The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. 

And still we love the evil cause. 

And of the just effect complain : 
We tread upon life's broken laws. 
And murmur at our self-inflicted pain ; 

We turn us from the light, and find 

Our spectral shapes before us thrown, 
As they who leave the sun behind 
Walk in the shadows of themselves alone. 

And scarce by will or strength of ours 

We set our faces to the day ; 
Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal 
Powers 
Alone can turn us from ourselves away. 

Our weakness is the strength of sin, 

But love must needs be stronger far, 
Outreaching all and gathering in 
The erring spirit and the wandering star. 

A Voice grows with the growing years ; 

Earth, hushing down her bitter cry, 
Looks upward from her graves, and hears, 
" The Resurrection and the Life am I." 



438 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Love Divine ! — whose constant beam 

Shines on the eyes that will not see, 
And waits to bless us, while we dream 
Thou leavest us because we turn from 
thee! 

All souls that struggle and aspire, 

All hearts of prayer by thee are lit ; 
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. 

Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou 
know'st. 
Wide as our need thy favors fall ; 
The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. 

O Beauty, old yet ever new ! 

Eternal Voice, and Inward Word, 
The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 
The old sphere-music which the Samian 
beard ! 

Truth which the sage and prophet saw. 

Long sought without, but found within, 
The Law of Love beyond all law. 
The Life o'erflooding mortal death and 
sin ! 

Shine on us with the light which glowed 
Upon the trance-bomid shepherd's way, 
Who saw the Darkness overflowed 
And drowned by tides of everlasting Day. 

Shine, light of God ! — make broad thy 
scope 
To all who sin and suJBPer ; more 
And better than we dare to hope 
With Heaven's compassion make our long- 
ings poor ! 



THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL 

Lieutenant Herndon'a Report of the Explo- 
ration of the Amazon has a striking description 
of the peculiar and melancholy notes of a bird 
heard by night on the shores of the river. The 
Indian guides called it " The Cry of a Lost 
Soul " ! Among the numerous translations of 
this poem is one by the Emperor of Brazil. 

In that black forest, where, when day is 

done, 
With a snake's stillness glides the Amazon 
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun, 



A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood, 
The long, despairing moan of solitude 
And darkness and the absence of all good, 

Startles the traveller, with a sound so drear, 

So full of hopeless agony and fear. 

His heart stands still and listens like his 



The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll, 
Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale's 

thole. 
Crosses himself, and whispers, "A lost 

soul ! " 

" No, Seiior, not a bird. I know it well, — 
It is the pained soul of some infidel 
Or cursed heretic that cries from hell. 

" Poor fool ! with hope still mocking his 

despair, 
He wanders, shrieking on the midnight 

air 
For human pity and for Christian prayer. 

" Saints strike him dumb ! Our Holy Mo- 
ther hath 
No prayer for him who, sinning unto death, 
Burns always in the furnace of God's 
wrath ! " 

Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie. 
Lending new horror to that mournful cry. 
The voyager listens, making no reply. 

Dim burns the boat-lamp ; shadows deepen 

round, 
From giant trees with snake-like creepers 

wound, 
And the black water glides without a sound. 

But in the traveller's heart a secret sense 
Of nature plastic to benign intents, 
And an eternal good in Providence, 

Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his 

eyes ; 
And lo ! rebuking all earth's ominous cries. 
The Cross of pardon lights the tropic 

skies ! 

" Father of all ! " he urges his strong plea, 
" Thou lovest all : Thy erring child may 

be 
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee I 



ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER 



439 



" All souls are Thine ; the wings of morn- 


Melt into the vague immense, 


ing bear 


Father ! I may come to Thee 


None from that Presence which is every- 


Even with the beggar's plea. 


where, 


As the poorest of Thy poor. 


Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. 


With ray needs, and nothing more. 


" Through sins of sense, perversities of will, 


Not as one who seeks his home 


Through doubt and pain, through guilt and 


With a step assured I come ; 


shame and ill, 


Still behind the tread I hear 


Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still. 


Of my life-companion, Fear ; 




Still a shadow deep and vast 


" Wilt thou not make. Eternal Source and 


From my westering feet is cast, 


Goal ! 


Wavering, doubtful, undefined. 


In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole. 


Never shapen nor outlined : 


And change to praise the cry of a lost soul? " 


From myself the fear has grown. 




And the shadow is my own. 




Yet, Lord, through all a sense 


ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER 


Of Thy tender providence 




Stays my failing heart on Thee, 


AxDREW^ Rykman 's dead and gone ; 


And confirms the feeble knee ; 


You can see his leaning slate 


And, at times, my worn feet press 


In the graveyard, and thereon 


Spaces of cool quietness. 


Read his name and date. 


Lilied whiteness shone upon 




Not by light of moon or sun. 


" Trust is truer than our fears," 


Hours there be of inmost calm, 


Runs the legend through the moss, 


Broken but by grateful psalm, 


" Gain is not in added years, 


When I love Thee more than fear Thee, 


Nor in death is loss" 


And Thy blessed Christ seems near me, 




With forgiving look, as when 


Still the feet that thither trod. 


He beheld the Magdalen. 


All the friendly eyes are dim ; 


Well I know that all things move 


Only Nature, now, and God 


To the spheral rhythm of love, — 


Have a care for him. 


That to Thee, Lord of all ! 




Nothing can of chance befall : 


There the dews of quiet fall, 


Child and seraph, mote and star. 


Singing birds and soft winds stray 


Well Thou knowest what we are ! 


ShaU the tender Heart of all 


Through Thy vast creative plan 


Be less kind than they ? 


Looking, from the worm to man. 




There is pity in Thine eyes. 


What he was and what he is 


But no hatred nor suqjrise. 


They who ask may haply find, 


Not in blind caprice of will. 


If they read this prayer of his 


Not in cunning sleight of skill. 


Which he left behind. 


Not for show of power, was wrought 




Nature's marvel in Thy thought. 




Never careless hand and vain 




Smites these chords of joy and pain ; 


Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare 


No immortal selfishness 


Shape in words a mortal's prayer ! 


Plays the game of curse and bless : 


Prayer, that, when my day is done, 


Heaven and earth are witnesses 


And I see its setting sun, 


That Thy glory goodness is. 


Shorn and beaniless, cold and dim, 


Not for sport of mind and force 


Sink beneath the horizon's rim, — 


Hast Thou made Thy universe. 


When this ball of rock and clay 


But as atmosphere and zone 


Crumbles from my feet away. 


Of Thy loving heart alone. 


And the solid shores of sense 


Man, who walketh in a show, 



440 RELIGIOUS POEMS 


Sees before him, to and fro, 


Less I love the pure and just. 


Shadow and illusion go ; 


Lord, forgive these words of mine : 


All things flow and fluctuate. 


What have I that is not Thine ? 


Now contract and now dilate. 


Whatsoe'er I fain would boast 


In the welter of this sea, 


Needs Thy pitying pardon most. 


Nothing stable is but Thee ; 


Thou, Elder Brother ! who 


In this whirl of swooning trance, 


In Thy flesh our trial knew, 


Thou alone art permanence ; 


Thou, who hast been touched by these 


All without Thee only seems, 


Our most sad infirmities. 


All beside is choice of dreams. 


Thou alone the gulf canst span 


Never yet in darkest mood 


In the dual heart of man. 


Doubted I that Thou wast good. 


And between the soul and sense 


Nor mistook my will for fate. 


Reconcile all difference, 


Pain of siu for heavenly hate, — 


Change the dream of me and mine 


Never dreamed the gates of pearl 


For the truth of Thee and Thine, 


Rise from out the burning marl, 


And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, 


Or that good can only live 


Interfuse Thy calm of life. 


Of the bad conservative, 


Haply, thus by Thee renewed, 


And through counterpoise of hell 


In Thy borrowed goodness good, 


Heaven alone be possible. 


Some sweet morning yet in God's 




Dim, feonian periods. 


For myself alone I doubt ; 


Joyful I shall wake to see 


All is well, I know, without ; 


Those I love who rest in Thee 


I alone the beauty mar. 


And to them in Thee allied, 


I alone the music jar. 


Shall my soul be satisfied. 


Yet, with hands by evil stained, 




And an ear by discord pained. 


Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me 


I am groping for the keys 


What the future life may be. 


Of the heavenly harmonies ; 


Other lips may well be bold ; 


Still within my heart I bear 


Like the publican of old, 


Love for all things good and fair. 


I can only urge the plea. 


Hands of want or souls in pain 


" Lord, be merciful to me ! " 


Have not sought my door in vain ; 


Nothing of desert I claim, 


I have kept my fealty good 


Unto me belongeth shame. 


To the human brotherhood ; 


Not for me the crowns of gold, 


Scarcely have I asked in prayer 


Palms, and harpings manifold ; 


That which others might not share. 


Not for erring eye and feet 


I, who hear with secret shame 


Jasper wall and golden street. 


Praise that paineth more than blame, 


What thou wilt, Father, give I 


Rich alone in favors lent. 


All is gain that I receive. 


Virtuous by accident, 


If my voice I may not raise 


Doubtful where I fain would rest, 


In the elders' song of praise, 


Frailest where I seem the best. 


If I may not, sin-defiled. 


Only strong for lack of test, — 


Claim my birthright as a child, 


What am I, that I should press 


Suffer it that I to Thee 


Special pleas of selfishness. 


As an hired servant be ; 


Coolly mounting into heaven 


Let the lowliest task be mine, 


On my neighbor unforgiven ? 


Grateful, so the work be Thine ; 


Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised, 


Let me find the humblest place 


Comes a saint unrecognized ; 


In the shadow of Thy grace : 


Never fails my heart to greet 


Blest to me were any spot 


Noble deed with warmer beat ; 


Where temptation whispers not. 


Halt and maimed, I own not less 


If there be some weaker one, 


All the grace of holiness ; 


Give me strength to help him on ; 


Nor, through shame or self-distrust, 


If a blinder soul there be. 



THE ANSWER 



441 



Let me guide him nearer Thee. 
Make my mortal dreams come true 
With the work I faiu would do ; 
Clothe with life the weak inteut, 
Let me be the thing I meant ; 
Let me find in Thy employ 
Peace that dearer is than joy ; 
Out of self to love be led 
And to heaven acclimated, 
Until all things sweet and good 
Seem my natural habitude. 



So we read the prayer of him 
Who, with John of Labadie, 

Trod, of old, the oozy rim 
Of the Zuyder Zee. 

Thus did Andrew Rykman pray. 

Are we wiser, better grown, 
That we may not, in our day, 

Make his prayer our own ? 



THE ANSWER 

Spare me, dread angel of reproof. 
And let the sunshine weave to-day 

Its gold-threads in the warp and woof 
Of life so poor and gray. 

Spare me awhile ; the flesh is weak. 

These lingering feet, that fain would stray 
Among the flowers, shall some day seek 

The strait and narrow way. 

Take off thy ever-watchful eye. 
The awe of thy rebuking frown ; 

The dullest slave at times must sigh 
To fling his burdens down ; 

To drop his galley's straining oar, 

And press, in summer warmth and calm, 

The lap of some enchanted shore 
Of blossom and of balm. 

Grudge not my life its hour of bloom. 
My heart its taste of long desire ; 

This day be mine : be those to come 
As duty shall require. 

The deep voice answered to my own. 
Smiting my selfish prayers away ; 



" To-morrow is with God alone, 
And man hath but to-day. 

" Say not, thy fond, vain heart within, 
The Father's arm shall still be wide, 

When from these pleasant ways of sin 
Thou turn'st at eventide. 

" * Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith, 
' And angels shall thy feet upbear.' 

He bids thee make a lie of faith, 
And blasphemy of prayer. 

" Though God be good and free be heaven. 
No force divine can love compel ; 

And, though the song of sins forgiven 
May sound through lowest hell, 

" The sweet persuasion of His voice 

Respects thy sanctity of will. 
He giveth day : thou hast thy choice 

To walk in darkness still ; 

" As one who, turning from the light, 
Watches his own gray shadow fall. 

Doubting, upon his path of night. 
If there be day at all ! 

" No word of doom may shut thee out, 
No wind of wrath may downward whirl, 

No swords of fire keep watch about 
The open gates of pearl ; 

" A tenderer light than moon or sim, 
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, 

May shine and sound forever on, 
And thou be deaf and dim. 

" Forever round the Mercy-seat 

The guiding lights of Love shall burn ; 

But what if, habit-bomid, thy feet 
Shall lack the will to turn ? 

" What if thine eye refuse to see. 

Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome 
fail, 

And thou a willing captive be. 
Thyself thy own dark jail ? 

" Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess. 
As the long years of God unroU, 

To make thy dreary selfishness 
The prison of a soul ! 



442 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



" To doubt the love that fain would break 
The fetters from thy self-bound limb ; 

And dream that God can thee forsake 
As thou forsakest Him 1 " 



THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 

FRIENDS ! with whom my feet have trod 
The quiet aisles of prayer, 

Glad witness to your zeal for God 
And love of man I bear. 

1 trace your lines of argument ; 

Your logic linked and strong 

I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 

And fears a doubt as wrong. 

But still my human hands are weak 

To hold your iron creeds : 
Against the words ye bid me speak 

My heart within me pleads. 

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? 

Who talks of scheme and plan ? 
The Lord is God ! He needeth not 

The poor device of man. 

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boldness shod ; 

I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 

Ye praise His justice ; even such 

His pitying love I deem : 
Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch 

The robe that hath no 



Ye see the curse which overbroods 

A world of pain and loss ; 
I hear our Lord's beatitudes 

And prayer upon the cross. 

More than your schoolmen teach, within 

Myself, alas ! I know : 
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, 

Too small the merit show. 

I bow my forehead to the dust, 

I veil mine eyes for shame. 
And urge, in trembling self-distrust, 

A prayer without a claim. 

I see the wrong that round me lies, 
I feel the guilt within ; 



I hear, with groan and travail-cries, 
The world confess its sin. 

Yet, in the maddening maze of things. 
And tossed by storm and flood. 

To one fixed trust my spirit clings ; 
I know that God is good ! 

Not mine to look where cherubim 

And seraphs may not see, 
But nothing can be good in Him 

Which evil is in me. 

The wrong that pains my soul below 

I dare not throne above, 
I know not of His hate, — I know 

His goodness and His love. 

I dimly guess from blessings known 

Of greater out of sight, 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 

His judgments too are right. 

I long for household voices gone, 
For vanished smiles I long. 

But God hath led my dear ones on, 
And He can do no wrong. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise. 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 

And if my heart and flesh are weak 

To bear an untried pain. 
The bruised reed He will not break, 

But strengthen and sustain. 

No offering of my own I have, 
Nor works my faith to prove ; 

I can but give the gifts He gave, 
And plead His love for love. 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their f ronded palms in air ; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

O brothers ! if my faith is vain, 
If hopes like these betray. 



OUR MASTER 



443 



Pray for me that mj' feet may gain 




The sure and safer way. 


OUR MASTER 


And Thou, Lord ! by whom are seen 


Immortal Love, forever full. 


Thy creatures as they be, 


Forever flowing free, 


Forgive me if too close I lean 
My human heart on Thee ! 


Forever shared, forever whole, 


A never-ebbing sea ! 




Our outward lips confess the name 


THE COMMON QUESTION 


All other names above ; 




Love only knoweth whence it came 


Behind us at our evening meal 


And comprehendeth love. 


The gray bird ate his fill, 




Swung downward by a single claw, 


Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 


And wiped his hooked bill. 


The mists of earth away ! 




Shine out, Light Divine, and show 


He shook his wings and crimson tail, 


How wide and far we stray ! 


And set his head aslant, 




And, in his shai'p, impatient way, 


Hush every lip, close every book, 


Asked, " What does Charlie want ? " 


The strife of tongues forbear ; 




Why forward reach, or backward look, 


« Fie, silly bird ! " I answered, "tuck 


For love that clasps like air ? 


Your head beneath your wing. 




And go to sleep ; " — but o'er and o'er 


We may not climb the heavenly steeps 


He asked the self-same thing. 


To bring the Lord Clirist down : 




In vain we search the lowest deeps, 


Then, smiling, to myself I said : 


For Him no depths can drown. 


How like are men and birds ! 




We all are saying what he says. 


Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape, 


In action or in words. 


The lineaments restore 




Of Him we know in outward shape 


The boy with whip and top and drum, 


And in the flesh no more. 


The girl with hoop and doll. 




And men with lands and houses, ask 


He Cometh not a king to reign ; 


The question of Poor Poll. 


The world's long hope is dim ; 




The weary centuries watch in vain 


However full, with something more 


The clouds of heaven for Him. 


We fain the bag would cram ; 




We sigh above our crowded nets 


Death comes, life goes ; the asking eye 


For fish that never swam. 


And ear are answerless ; 




The grave is dumb, the hollow sky 


No bounty of indulgent Heaven 


Is sad with silentness. 


The vague desire can stay ; 




Self-love is still a Tartar mill 


The letter fails, and systems fall, 


For grinding prayers alway. 


And every symbol wanes ; 




The Spirit over-brooding all 


The dear God hears and pities all ; 


Eternal Love remains. 


He knoweth all our wants ; 




And what we blindly ask of Him 


And not for signs in heaven above 


His love withholds or grants. 


Or earth below they look. 




Who know with John His smile of love, 


And so I sometimes think our prayers 


With Peter His rebuke. 


Might well be merged in one ; 




And nest and perch and hearth and church 


In joy of inward peace, or sense 


Repeat, " Thy wHl be done." 


Of sorrow over sin, 



444 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



He is His own best evidence, 
His witness is within. 

No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers. 

No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years ; — 

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 

A present help is He ; 
And faith has still its Olivet, 

And love its Galilee. 

The healing of His seamless dress 

Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 

And we are whole again. 

Through Him the first fond prayers are said 

Our lips of childhood frame. 
The last low whispers of our dead 

Are burdened with His name. 

Our Lord and Master of us all ! 

Whate'er our name or sign. 
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy caU, 

We test our lives by Thine. 

Thou judgest us ; Thy purity 

Doth all our lusts condemn ; 
The love that draws us nearer Thee 

Is hot with wrath to them. 

Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight ; 

And, naked to Thy glance, 
Our secret sins are in the light 

Of Thy pure countenance. 

Thy healing pains, a keen distress 

Thy tender light shines in ; 
Thy sweetness is the bitterness. 

Thy grace the pang of sin. 

Yet, weak and blinded though we be. 

Thou dost our service own ; 
We bring our varying gifts to Thee, 

And Thou rejectest none. 

To Thee our fidl humanity, 

Its joys and pains, belong ; 
The wrong of man to man on Thee 

Indicts a deeper wrong. 



Who hates, hates Thee, who loves 
Therein to Thee allied ; 



All sweet accords of hearts and homes 
In Thee are multiplied. 

Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine, 

Within our earthly sod, 
Most human and yet most divine, 

The flower of man and God ! 

O Love ! O Life ! Our faith and sight 

Thy presence maketli one, 
As through transfigured clouds of white 

We trace the noon-day sun. 

So, to our mortal eyes siibdued, 
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, 

We know in Thee the fatherhood 
And heart of God revealed. 

We faintly hear, we dimly see. 
In differing phrase we pray ; 

But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 
The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 

The homage that we render Thee 

Is still our Father's own ; 
No jealous claim or rivalry 

Divides the Cross and Throne. 

To do Thy will is more than praise, 
As words are less than deeds. 

And simple trust can find Thy ways 
We miss with chart of creeds. 

No pride of self Thy service hath. 

No place for me and mine ; 
Our human strength is weakness, death 

Our life, apart from Thine. 

Apart from Thee all gain is loss, 

All labor vainly done ; 
The solemn shadow of Thy Cross 

Is better than the sun. 

Alone, O Love ineffable ! 

Thy saving name is given ; 
To turn aside from Thee is hell. 

To walk with Thee is heaven ! 

How vain, secure in all Thou art. 

Our noisy championship ! 
The sighing of the contrite heart 

Is more than flattering lip. 

Not Thine the bigot's partial plea. 
Nor Thine the zealot's ban ; 



THE MEETING 



445 



Thou well canst spare a love of Thee 
Which ends in hate of man. 

Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
What may Thy service he ? — 

Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But simply following Thee. 

We bring no ghastly holocaust, 

We pile no graven stone ; 
He serves thee best who loveth most 

His brothers and Thy own. 

hy 

Of love and gratitude ; 

Thy sacramental liturgies 

The joy of doing good. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, 

Thy inward altars raise ; 
Its faith and hope Thy canticles, 

And its obedience praise ! 



THE MEETING 

The two speakers in the meeting referred 
to in this poem were Avis Keene, whose very 
presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in 
spirit and person, whose words seemed a mes- 
sag'e of love and tender concern to her hearers ; 
and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence and 
rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. 
In obedience to her apprehended duty she 
made visits of Christian love to various parts 
of Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and 
Palestine. 

The elder folks shook hands at last, 
Down seat by seat the signal passed. 
To simple ways like ours unused, 
Half solemnized and half amused. 
With long -drawn breath and shrug, my 

guest 
His sense of glad relief expressed. 
Outside, the liills lay warm in sun ; 
Tiie cattle in the meadow-run 
Stood half-leg deep ; a single bird 
The green repose above us stirred. 
" What part or lot have you," he said, 
** In these dull rites of drowsy-head ? 



Is silence worship ? Seek it where 

It soothes with dreams the summer air. 

Not in this close and rude-benched hall, 

But where soft lights and shadows fall, 

And all the slow, sleep-walking hours 

Glide soundless over grass and flowers ! 

From time and place and form apart, 

Its holy ground the human heart, 

Nor ritual-bound nor templeward 

Walks the free spirit of the Lord ! 

Our common Master did not pen 

His followers up from other men ; 

His service liberty indeed. 

He built no church, He framed no creed ; 

But while the saintly Pharisee 

Made broader his phylactery. 

As from the synagogue was seen 

The dusty-sandalled Nazarene 

Through ripening cornfields lead the way 

Upon the awful Sabbath day. 

His sermons were the healthful talk 

That shorter made the mountain-walk. 

His wayside texts were flowers and birds, 

Where mingled with His gracious words 

The rustle of the tamarisk-tree 

And ripple-wash of Galilee." 

" Thy words are well, O friend," I said ; 

" Unmeasured and unlimited. 

With noiseless slide of stone to stone. 

The mystic Church of God has grown. 

Invisible and silent stands 

The temple never made with hands. 

Unheard the voices still and small 

Of its unseen confessional. 

He needs no special place of prayer 

Whose hearing ear is everywhere ; 

He brings not back the childish days 

That ringed the earth with stones of praise, 

Roofed Karuak's hall of gods, and laid 

The plinths of Philfe's colonnade. 

Still less He owns the selfish good 

And sickly growth of solitude, — 

The worthless grace that, out of sight, 

Flowers in the desert anchorite ; 

Dissevered from the suffering whole, 

Love hath no power to save a soul. 

Not out of Self, the origin 

And native air and soil of sin. 

The living waters spring and flow. 

The trees with leaves of healing grow. 

" Dream not, O friend, because I seek 
This quiet shelter twice a week, 
I better deem its pine-laid floor 



446 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore ; 
But nature is not solitude : 
She crowds us with her thronging wood ; 
Her many hands reach out to us, 
Her many tongues are garrulous ; 
Perpetual riddles of surprise 
She offers to our ears and eyes ; 
She will not leave our senses still, 
But drags them captive at her will : 
And, making earth too great for heaven, 
She hides the Giver in the given. 

" And so I find it well to come 

For deeper rest to this still room. 

For here the habit of the soul 

Feels less the outer world's control ; 

The strength of mutual purpose pleads 

More earnestly our common needs ; 

And from the silence multiplied 

By these still forms on either side, 

The world that time and sense have known 

Falls off and leaves us God alone. 

" Yet rarely through the charmed repose 
Unmixed the stream of motive flows, 
A flavor of its many springs, 
The tints of earth and sky it brings ; 
In the still waters needs must be 
Some shade of human sympathy ; 
And here, in its accustomed place, 
I look on memory's dearest face ; 
The blind by-sitter guesseth not 
What shadow haunts that vacant spot ; 
No eyes save mine alone can see 
The love wherewith it welcomes me ! 
And still, with those alone my kin, 
In doubt and weakness, want and sin, 
I bow my head, my heart I bare, 
As when that face was living there. 
And strive (too oft, alas ! in vain) 
The peace of simple trust to gain. 
Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay 
The idols of my heart away. 

" Welcome the silence all unbroken. 
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, — 
Such golden words as hers for whom 
Our autumn flowers have just made room ; 
Whose hopeful utterance through and 

through 
The fresliness of the morning blew ; 
Who loved not less the earth that light 
Fell on it from the heavens in sight, 
But saw in all fair forms more fair 
The Eternal beauty mirrored there. 



Whose eighty j'ears but added grace 

And saintlier meaning to her face, — 

The look of one who bore away 

Glad tidings from the hills of day. 

While all our hearts went forth to meet 

The coining of her beautiful feet ! 

Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread 

Is in the paths where Jesus led ; 

Who dreams her childhood's sabbath 

dream 
By Jordan's willow-shaded stream, 
And, of the hymns of hope and faith, 
Sung by the monks of Nazareth, 
Hears pious echoes, in the call 
To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall. 
Repeating where His works were wrought 
The lesson that her Master taught, 
Of whom an elder Sibyl gave. 
The prophecies of Cumae's cave ! 

"I ask no organ's soulless breath 

To drone the themes of life and death, 

No altar candle-lit by day. 

No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play, 

No cool philosophy to teach 

Its bland audacities of speech 

To double-tasked idolaters 

Themselves their gods and worshippers, 

No pulpit hammered by the fist 

Of loud-asserting dogmatist. 

Who borrows for the Hand of love 

The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. 

I know how well the fathers taught. 

What work the later schoolmen wrought ; 

I reverence old-time faith and men, 

But God is near us now as then ; 

His force of love is still unspent. 

His hate of sin as imminent ; 

And still the measure of our needs 

Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds ; 

The manna gathered yesterday 

Already savors of decay ; 

Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown 

Question us now from star and stone ; 

Too little or too much we know, 

And sight is swift and faith is slow ; 

The power is lost to self-deceive 

With shallow forms of make-believe. 

We walk at high noon, and the bells 

Call to a thousand oracles, 

But the sound deafens, and the light 

Is stronger than our dazzled sight ; 

The letters of the sacred Book 

Glimmer and swim beneath our look ; 

Still struggles in the Age's breast 



THE CLEAR VISION 



447 



With deepening agony of quest 
The old entreaty : ' Art thon He, 
Or look we for the Christ to be ? ' 

" God shoidd be most where man is least 

So, where is neither church nor priest, 

And never rag of form or creed 

To clothe the nakedness of need, — 

Where farmer-folk in silence meet, — 

I turn my bell-unsummoned feet ; 

I lay the critic's glass aside, 

I tread upon my lettered pride, 

And, lowest-seated, testify 

To the oneness of humanity ; 

Confess the universal want. 

And share whatever Heaven may grant. 

He findeth not who seeks his own, 

The soul is lost that 's saved alone. 

Not on one favored forehead fell 

Of old the fire-tongued miracle. 

But flamed o'er all the thronging host 

The baptism of the Holy Ghost ; 

Heart answers heart : in one desire 

The blending lines of prayer aspire ; 

• Where, in my name, meet two or three,' 

Our Lord hath said, ' I there will be ! ' 

" So sometimes comes to soul and sense 
The feeling which is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours. 
The low and dark horizon lifts. 
To light the scenic terror shifts ; 
The breath of a diviner air 
Blows down the answer of a prayer : 
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt 
A great compassion clasps about, 
And law and goodness, love and force, 
Are wedded fast beyond divorce. 
Then duty leaves to love its task. 
The beggar Self forgets to ask ; 
With smile of trust and folded hands, 
The passive soul in waiting stands 
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 
The One true Life its own renew. 

" So to the calmly gathered thought 
The innermost of truth is taught. 
The mystery dimly understood. 
That love of God is love of good, 
And, chiefly, its divinest trace 
In Him of Nazareth's holy face ; 



That to be saved is only this, — 

Salvation from our selfishness. 

From more than elemental fire, 

The soul's unsauctified desire. 

From sin itself, and not the pain 

That warns us of its chafing chain ; 

That worship's deeper meaning lies 

In mercy, and not sacrifice. 

Not proud humilities of sense 

And posturing of penitence. 

But love's unforced obedience ; 

That Book and Church and Day are given 

For man, not God, — for earth, not 

heaven, — 
The blessed means to holiest ends, 
Not masters, but benignant friends ; 
That the dear Christ dwells not afar, 
The king of some remoter star. 
Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
But here, amidst the poor and blind. 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life, He lives to-day." 



THE CLEAR VISION 

I DID but dream. I never knew 

What charms our sternest season wore. 

Was never yet the sky so blue. 
Was never earth so white before. 

Till now I never saw the glow 

Of sunset on yon hills of snow. 

And never learned the bough's designs 

Of beauty in its leafless lines. 

Did ever such a morning break 

As that my eastern windows see ? 
Did ever such a moonlight take 

Weird photographs of shrub and tree ? 
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet 
The music of the winter street ? 
Was ever yet a sound by half 
So merry as yon school-boy's laugh ? 

O Earth ! with gladness overfraught. 

No added charm thy face hath found ; 
Within my heart the change is wrought, 
My footsteps make enchanted ground. 
From couch of pain and curtained room. 
Forth to thy light and air I come. 
To find in all that meets my eyes 
The freshness of a glad surprise. 



448 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Fair seem these winter clays, and soon 

Shall blow the warm west- winds of spring, 
To set the unbound rills in tune 

And hither urge the bluebird's wing. 
The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods 
Grow misty green with leafing buds, 
And violets and wind-flowers sway 
Against the throbbing heart of May. 

Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own 

The wiser love severely kind ; 
Since, richer for its chastening grown, 

I see, whereas I once was blind. 
The world, O Father ! hath not wronged 
With loss the life by Thee prolonged ; 
But still, with every added year, 
More beautiful Thy works appear ! 

As Thou hast made thy world without. 

Make Thou more fair my world within ; 
Sliine through its lingering clouds of doubt ; 

Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin ; 
Fill, brief or long, my granted span 
Of life with love to thee and man ; 
Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, 
But let my last days be my best ! 



DIVINE COMPASSION 

Long since, a dream of heaven I had, 
And still the vision haunts me oft ; 

I see the saints in white robes clad. 
The martyrs with their palms aloft ; 

But hearing still, in middle song. 
The ceaseless dissonance of wrong ; 

And shrinking, with hid faces, from the 
strain 

Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse 
and pain. 

The glad song falters to a wail, 
The harping sinks to low lament ; 

Before the still unlifted veil 

I see the crowned foreheads bent, 

Making more sweet the heavenly air 
With breathings of unselfish prayer ; 

And a Voice saith : " O Pity which is pain, 

O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings 
which remain ! 

" Shall souls redeemed by me refuse 
To share my sorrow in their turn ? 

Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse 
Of peace with selfish unconcern ? 



Has saintly ease no pitying care ? 

Has faith no work, and love no prayer ? 

While sin remains, and souls in darkness 
dwell. 

Can heaven itself be heaven, and look un- 
moved on hell ? " 

Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream, 
A wind of heaven blows coolly in ; 

Fainter the awful discords seem, 

The smoke of torment grows more thin. 

Tears quench the burning soil, and thence 
Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence : 

And through the dreary realm of man's de- 
spair. 

Star-crowned an angel walks, and lo ! God's 
hope is there ! 

Is it a dream ? Is heaven so high 
That pity cannot breathe its air ? 

Its happy eyes forever dry. 
Its holy lips without a prayer ! 

My God ! my God ! if thither led 
By Thy free grace unmerited. 

No crown nor palm be mine, but let me 
keep 

A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still 
can weep. 



THE PRAYER-SEEKER 

Along the aisle where prayer was made, 
A woman, all in black arrayed. 
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host. 
With gliding motion of a ghost. 
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon 
A scroll which bore these words alone, 
Pray for me ! 

Back from the place of worshipping 
She glided like a guilty thing : 
The rustle of her draperies, stirred 
By hurrying feet, alone was heard ; 
While, full of awe, the preacher read. 
As out into the dark she sped : 
Pray for me ! 

Back to the night from whence she came, 
To unimagined grief or shame ! 
Across the threshold of that door 
None knew the burden that she bore ; 
Alone she left the written scroll. 
The legend of a troubled soul, — 
Pray for me! 



THE BREWING OF SOMA 



449 



Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin ! 
Thou leav'st a common need within ; 
Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight, 
Some misery inarticulate. 
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread, 
Some household sorrow all unsaid. 
Pray for us ! 

Pass on ! The type of all thou art, 
Sad witness to the common heart ! 
With face in veil and seal on lip. 
In mute and strange companionship, 
Like thee we wander to and fro, 
Dumbly imploring as we go : 
Pray for us ! 

Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads 
Our want perchance hath greater needs ? 
Yet they who make their loss the gain 
Of others shall not ask in vain. 
And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer 
Of love from lips of self-despair : 
Pray for us ! 

In vain remorse and fear and hate 
Beat with bruised hands against a fate 
Whose walls of iron only move 
And open to the touch of love. 
He only feels his burdens fall 
Who, taught by suffering, pities all. 
Pray for us ! 

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 
The mystery of another's breast. 
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow. 
Or heads are white, thou need'st not know. 
Enough to note by many a sign 
That every heart hath needs like thine. 
Pray for us! 



THE BREWLNG OF SOMA 

" These libations mixed with milk have been prepared 
for Indra : offer Soma to the drinker of Soma." — Va- 
shisia, translated by Max IIulleb. 

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke 
Up through the green wood curled ; 
" Bring honey from the hollow oak. 
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke, 
In the childhood of the world. 

And brewed they well or brewed they ill, 

The priests thrust in their rods, 
First tasted, aud then drank their fill, 



And shouted, with one voice and will, 
" Behold the drink of gods ! " 

They drank, and lo ! in heart and brain 

A new, glad life began ; 
The gray of hair grew young again, 
The sick man laughed away his pain, 

The cripple leaped aud ran. 

" Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent. 

Forget your long annoy." 
So sang the priests. From tent to tent 
The Soma's sacred madness went, 

A storm of drunken joy. 

Then knew each rapt inebriate 

A winged and glorious birth. 
Soared upward, with strange joy elate, 
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate. 

And, sobered, sank to earth. 

The land with Soma's praises rang ; 

On Gihon's banks of shade 
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang ; 
In joy of life or mortal pang 

All men to Soma prayed. 

The morning twilight of the race 

Sends down these matin psalms ; 
And still with wondering eyes we trace 
The simple prayers to Soma's grace. 
That Vedic verse embalms. 

As in that child-world's early year, 

Each after age has striven 
By music, incense, vigils drear, 
And trance, to bring the skies more near, 

Or lift men up to heaven ! 

Some fever of the blood and brain. 

Some self-exalting spell, 
The scourger's keen delight of pain. 
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain, 

The wild-haired Bacchant's yell, — 

The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk 

The saner brute below ; 
The naked Santon, hashish-drunk, 
The cloister madness of the monk. 

The fakir's torture-show ! 

And yet the past comes round again, 

And new doth old fulfil ; 
In sensual transports wild as vain 



45° 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



We brew in many a Christian fane 
The heathen Soma still ! 

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, 

Forgive our foolish ways ! 
Reclothe us in our rightful mind, 
In purer lives Thy service find. 

In deeper reverence, praise. 

In simple trust like theirs who heard 

Beside the Syrian sea 
The gracious calling of the Lord, 
Let us, like them, without a word, 

Rise up and follow Thee. 

O Sabbath rest by Galilee ! 

O calm of hills above, 
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee 
The silence of eternity 

Interpreted by love ! 

With that deep hush subduing all 

Our words and works that drown 
The tender whisper of Thy call, 
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall 
As fell Thy manna down. 

Drop Thy still dews of quietness. 

Till all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress. 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of Thy peace. 

Breathe through the heats of our desire 

Thy coolness and Thy balm ; 
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire ; 
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and 
fire, 

O still, small voice of calm ! 



A WOMAN 

Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with 

ill, 
Behold ! thou art a woman still ! 
And, by that sacred name and dear, 
I bid thy better self appear. 
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see 
The rudimental purity, 
That, spite of change and loss, makes good 
Thy birthright-claim of womanhood ; 
An inward loathing, deep, intense ; 
A shame that is half innocence. 
Cast off the grave-clothes of thy sin I 



Rise from the dust thou liest in, 
As Mary rose at Jesus' word. 
Redeemed and white before the Lord I 
Reclaim thy lost soul ! In His name. 
Rise up, and break thy bonds of shame. 
Art weak ? He 's strong. Art fearful ? 

Hear 
The world's O'ercomer : *' Be of cheer ! " 
What lip shall judge when He approves ? 
Who dare to scorn the child He loves ? 



THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ 

The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was 
given by Mr. John Anderson to Agassiz for 
the uses of a summer school of natural history. 
A large barn was cleared and improvised as a 
lecture-room. Here, on the first morning of 
the school, all the company was gathered. 
" Agassiz had arranged no programme of ex- 
ercises," says Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis Agassiz; 
his Life and Correspondence, "trusting to the 
interest of the occasion to suggest what might 
best be said or done. But, as he looked upon 
his pupils gathered there to study nature with 
him, by an impulse as natural as it was un- 
premeditated, he called upon them to join in 
silently asking God's blessing on their work 
together. The pause was broken by the first 
words of an address no less fervent than its un- 
spoken prelude." This was in the summer of 
1873, and Agassiz died the December following. 

On the isle of Penikese, 
Ringed about by sapphire seas, 
Fanned by breezes salt and cool, 
Stood the Master with his school. 
Over sails that not in vain 
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, 
Line of coast that low and far 
Stretched its undulating bar, 
Wings aslant across the rim 
Of the waves they stooped to skim, 
Rock and isle and glistening bay, 
Fell the beautiful white day. 

Said the Master to the youth : 
" We have come in search of truth, 
Trying with uncertain key 
Door by door of mystery ; 
We are reaching, through His laws, 
To the garment-hem of Cause, 
Him, the endless, unbegun. 
The Unnamable, the One 
Light of all our light the Source, 
Life of life, and Force of force. 



IN QUEST 



45' 



As with fingers of the blind, 

We are groping licre to find 

What the liit-roglyphics mean 

Of the Unseen in the seen, 

What tlie Thought which nnderlies 

Nature's masking and disguise, 

Wliat it is that hides beneath 

Blight and bloom and birth and death. 

By past efforts unavailing, 

Doubt and error, loss and failing. 

Of our weakness made aware, 

On the threshold of onr task 

Let us light and guidance ask. 

Let us pause in silent prayer ! " 

Then the Master in his place 
Bowed his head a little space, 
And the leaves by soft airs stirred. 
Lapse of wave and cry of bird. 
Left the solemn hush mibroken 
Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 
While its wish, on earth unsaid, 
Rose to heaven interpreted. 
As, in life's best hours, we hear 
By the spirit's finer ear 
His low voice within us, thus 
The All-Father heareth us ; 
And His holy ear we pain 
Witli our noisy words and vain. 
Not for Him our violence 
Storming at the gates of sense, 
His the primal language. His 
The eternal silences ! 

Even the careless heart was moved, 

And the doubting gave assent, 

With a gesture reverent, 

To the Master well-beloved. 

As thin mists are glorified 

By the light they cannot hide, 

All who gazed upon him saw. 

Through its veil of tender awe, 

How his face was still uplit 

By the old sweet look of it, 

Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, 

And the love that casts out fear. 

Who the secret luay declare 

Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? 

Did the shade before him come 

Of th' inevitable doom. 

Of the end of earth so near, 

And Eternity's new year ? 

In the lap of sheltering seas 
Rests the isle of Penikese ; 



But the lord of the domain 
Comes not to his own again : 
Where the eyes that follow fail, 
On a vaster sea his sail 
Drifts beyond our beck and hail. 
Other lips within its bound 
Shall the laws of life expound ; 
Other eyes from rock and shell 
Read the world's old riddles well : 
But when breezes light and bland 
Blow from Summer's blossomed land, 
When the air is glad with wings. 
And the blithe song-sparrow sings, 
Many an eye with his still face 
Shall the living ones displace. 
Many an ear the word shall seek 
He alone could fitly speak. 
And one name fore verm ore 
Shall be uttered o'er and o'er 
By the waves that kiss the shore, 
By the curlew's whistle sent 
Down the cool, sea-scented air ; 
In all voices known to her. 
Nature owns her worshipper. 
Half in triumph, half lament. 
Thither Love shall tearful turn. 
Friendship pause uncovered there, 
And the wisest reverence learn 
From the Master's silent prayer. 



IN QUEST 

Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with 

thee 
On the great waters of the unsounded sea. 
Momently listening with suspended oar 
For the low rote of waves upon a shore 
Changeless as heaven, where never fog- 
cloud drifts 
Over its windless wood, nor mirage lifts 
The steadfast hills ; where never birds of 

doubt 
Sing to mislead, and every dream dies out, 
And the dark riddles which perplex us 

here 
In the sharp solvent of its light are clear ? 
Thou knowest how vain our quest ; how, 

soon or late. 
The baffling tides and circles of debate 
Swept back our bark unto its starting- 
place, 
Where, looking forth upon the blank, gray 

space, 
And round about us seeing, with sad eyes, 



452 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



The same old difficult hills and cloud-cold 

skies, 
We said : " This outward search availeth 

not 
To find Him. He is farther than we 

thought, 
Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot 
Whereon we wait, this commonplace of 

home, 
As to the well of Jacob, He may come 
And tell us all things." As I listened 

there. 
Through the expectant silences of prayer, 
Somewhat I seemed to hear, which hath to 

me 
Been hope, strength, comfort, and I give it 

thee. 

" The riddle of the world is understood 
Only by him who feels that God is good. 
As only he can feel who makes his love 
The ladder of his faith, and climbs above 
On th' rounds of his best instincts ; draws 

no line 
Between mere human goodness and divine. 
But, judging God by what in him is best, 
With a child's trust leans on a Father's 

breast. 
And hears unmoved the old creeds babble 

still 
Of kingly power and dread caprice of will, 
Chary of blessing, prodigal of curse. 
The pitiless doomsman of the universe. 
Can Hatred ask for love ? Can Selfishness 
Invite to self-denial ? Is He less 
Than man in kindly dealing ? Can He 

break 
His own great law of fatherhood, forsake 
And curse His children ? Not for earth 

and heaven 
Can separate tables of the law be given. 
No rule can bind which He himself denies ; 
The truths of time are not eternal lies." 

So heard I ; and the chaos round me spread 
To light and order grew ; and, "Lord," I 

said, 
" Our sins are our tormentors, worst of all 
Felt in distrustful shame that dares not call 
Upon Thee as our Father. We have set 
A strange god up, but Thou remainest yet. 
All that I feel of pity Thou hast known 
Before I was ; my best is all Thy o^vn. 
From Thy great heart of goodness mine but 

drew 



Wishes and prayers ; but Thou, O Lord, 

wilt do. 
In Thy own time, by ways I cannot see. 
All that I feel when I am nearest Thee ! " 



THE FRIEND'S BURIAL 

My thoughts are all in yonder town, 
Where, wept by many tears, 

To-day my mother's friend lays down 
The burden of her years. 

True as in life, no poor disguise 

Of death with her is seen. 
And on her simple casket lies 

No wreath of bloom and green. 

Oh, not for her the florist's art. 
The mocking weeds of woe ; 

Dear memories in each mourner's heart 
Like heaven's white lilies blow. 

And all about the softening air 
Of new-born sweetness tells, 

And the ungathered May-flowers wear 
The tints of ocean shells. 

The old, assuring miracle 

Is fresh as heretofore ; 
And earth takes up its parable 

Of life from death once more. 

Here organ-swell and church-bell toll 
Methinks but discord were ; 

The prayerful silence of the soul 
Is best befitting her. 

No sound should break the quietude 

Alike of earth and sky ; 
O wandering wind in Seabrook wood, 

Breathe but a half-heard sigh 1 

Sing softly, spring-bird, for her sake ; 

And thou not distant sea. 
Lapse lightly as if Jesus spake, 

And thou wert Galilee ! 

For all her quiet life flowed on 
As meadow streamlets flow. 

Where fresher green reveals alone 
The noiseless ways they go. 

From her loved place of prayer I see 
The plain-robed mourners pass, 



A CHRISTMAS CARMEN 



453 



With slow feet treading reverently 


The blessed Master none can doubt 


The graveyard's springing grass. 


Revealed in holy lives. 


Make room, mourning ones, for me, 




Where, like the friends of Paul, 


A CHRISTMAS CARMEN 


That you no more her face shall see 




You sorrow most of all. 


I 




Sound over all waters, reach out from all 


Her path shall brighten more and more 


lands, 


Unto the perfect day ; 


The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands ; 
Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of 


She cannot fail of peace who bore 


Such peace with her away. 


the morn, 




Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was 


sweet, calm face that seemed to wear 


born ! 


The look of sins forgiven ! 


With glad jubilations 


voice of prayer that seemed to bear 


Bring hope to the nations ! 


Our own needs up to heaven ! 


The dark night is ending and dawn has be- 


How reverent in our midst she stood, 


gun : 
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 


Or knelt in grateful praise ! 


All speech flow to music, all hearts beat 


What grace of Christian womanhood 


as one ! 


Was in her household ways ! 


II 


For still her holy living meant 


Sing the bridal of nations ! with chorals of 


No duty left undone ; 


love 


The heavenly and the human blent 


Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the 


Their kindred loves in one. 


dove. 




Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in 


And if her life small leisure found 


accord, 


For feasting ear and eye. 


And the voice of the world is the voice of 


And Pleasure, on her daily round, 


the Lord ! 


She passed unpausing by. 


Clasp hands of the nations 




In strong gratulations : 


Yet with her went a secret sense 


The dark night is ending and dawn has be- 


Of all things sweet and fair. 


gun ; 


And Beauty's gracious providence 


Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 


Refreshed her unaware. 


All speech flow to music, all hearts beat 


She kept her line of rectitude 


as one ! 

Ill 


With love's unconscious ease ; 




Her kindly instincts understood 


Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of 


All gentle courtesies. 


peace ; 




East, west, north, and south let the long 


An inborn charm of graciousness 


quarrel cease : 


Made sweet her smile and tone, 


Sing the song of great joy that the angels 


And glorified her farm-wife dress 


began. 


With beauty not its own. 


Sing of glory to God and of good-will to 


The dear Lord's best interpreters 


Hark ! joining in chorus 


Are humble human souls ; 


The heavens bend o'er us ! 


The Gospel of a life like hers 


The dark night is ending and dawn has be- 


Is more than books or scrolls. 


gun ; 




Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun. 


From scheme and creed the light goes out. 


All speech flow to music, all hearts beat 


The saintly fact survives ; 


as one ! 



454 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



VESTA 

O Christ of God ! whose life and death 

Our own have reconciled, 
Most quietly, most tenderly 

Take home Thy star-named child ! 

Thy grace is in her patient eyes, 
Thy words are on her tongue ; 

The very silence round her seems 
As if the angels sung. 

Her smile is as a listening child's 

Who hears its mother call ; 
The lilies of Thy perfect peace 

About her pillow fall. 

She leans from out our clinging arms 

To rest herself in Thine ; 
Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we 

Our well-beloved resign ! 

Oh, less for her than for ourselves 
We bow our heads and pray ; 

Her setting star, like Bethlehem's, 
To Thee shall point the way ! 



CHILD-SONGS 

Still linger in our noon of time 

And on our Saxon tongue 
The echoes of the home-born hymns 

The Aryan mothers sung. 

And childhood had its litanies 

In every age and clime ; 
The earliest cradles of the race 

Were rocked to poet's rhyme. 

Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower, 
Nor green earth's virgin sod. 

So moved the singer's heart of old 
As these small ones of God. 

The mystery of unfolding life 
Was more than dawning morn, 

Than opening flower or crescent moon 
The human soul new-born ! 

And still to childhood's sweet appeal 

The heart of genius turns. 
And more than all the sages teach 

From lisping voices learns, — 



The voices loved of him who sang, 
Where Tweed and Teviot glide, 

That sound to-day on all the winds 
That blow from Rydal-side, — 

Heard in the Teuton's household songs, 

And folk-lore of the Finn, 
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths 

The Christ-child enters in ! 

Before life's sweetest mystery still 
The heart in reverence kneels ; 

The wonder of the primal birth 
The latest mother feels. 

We need love's tender lessons taught 

As only weakness can ; 
God hath His small interpreters ; 

The child must teach the man. 

We wander wide through evil years, 
Our eyes of faitlf-grow dim ; 

But he is freshest from His hands 
And nearest unto Him ! 

And haply, pleading long with Him 

For sin-sick hearts and cold. 
The angels of our childhood still 

The Father's face behold. 

Of such the kingdom ! — Teach Thou us, 

O Master most divine. 
To feel the deep significance 

Of these wise words of Thine ! 

The haughty eye shall seek in vain 

What innocence beholds ; 
No cunning finds the key of heaven, 

No strength its gate unfolds. 

Alone to guilelessness and love 

That gate shall open fall ; 
The mind of pride is nothingness, 

The childlike heart is all ! 



THE HEALER 

TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S 
PICTURE OF CHRIST HEALING THE SICK 

So stood of old the holy Christ 
Amidst the suffering throng ; 

With whom His lightest touch sufficed 
To make the weakest strong. 



OVERRULED 



455 



That healing gift He lends to them 

Who use it in His name ; 
The power that filled His garment's hem 

Is evermore the same. 

For lo I in human hearts unseen 

The Healer dwelleth still, 
And they who make His temples clean 

The best subserve His will. 

The holiest task by Heaven decreed, 

An errand all divine, 
The burden of our common need 

To render less is thine. 

The paths of pain are thine. Go forth 
With patience, trust, and hope ; 

The sufferings of a sin-sick earth 
Shall give thee ample scope. 

Beside the imveiled mysteries 

Of life and death go stand, 
With guarded lips and reverent eyes 

And pui'e of heart and hand. 

So shalt thou be with power endued 

From Him who went about 
The Syrian hillsides doing good, 

And casting demons out. 

That Good Physician liveth yet 
Thy friend and guide to be ; 

The Healer by Gennesaret 

Shall walk the rounds with thee. 



THE TWO ANGELS 

God called the nearest angels who dwell 

with Him above : 
The tenderest one was Pity, the dearest 

one was Love. 

" Arise," He said, " my angels ! a wail of 

woe and sin 
Steals through the gates of heaven, and 

saddens all within. 

" My harps take up the mournful strain 
that from a lost world swells, 

The smoke of torment clouds the light and 
blights the asphodels. 

" Fly downward to that under world, and 
on its souls of pain 



Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, and 
Pity tears like rain ! " 

Two faces bowed before the Throne, veiled 

in their golden hair ; 
Four white wings lessened swiftly down 

the dark abyss of air. 

The way was strange, the flight was long ; 

at last the angels came 
Where swimg the lost and nether world, 

red-wrapped in rayless flame. 

There Pity, shuddering, wept ; but Love, 
with faith too strong for fear. 

Took heart from God's almightiness and 
smiled a smile of cheer. 

And lo ! that tear of Pity quenched the 

flame whereon it fell, 
And, with the smishine of that smile, hope 

entered into hell ! 

Two unveiled faces full of joy looked up- 
ward to the Throne, 

Four white wings folded at the feet of Him 
who sat thereon ! 

And deeper than the sound of seas, more 

soft than falling flake, 
Amidst the hush of wing and song the 

Voice Eternal spake : 

" Welcome, my angels ! ye have brought a 

holier joy to heaven ; 
Henceforth its sweetest song shall be the 

song of sin forgiven ! " 

OVERRULED 

The threads our hands in blindness spin 
No self-determined plan weaves in ; 
The shuttle of the unseen powers 
Works out a pattern not as ours. 

Ah ! small the choice of him who sings 
What sound shall leave the smitten strings ; 
Fate holds and guides the hand of art ; 
The singer's is the servant's part. 

Tlie wind-harp chooses not the tone 

That through its trembling threads is 

blown ; 
The patient organ cannot guess 
What hand its passive keys shall press. 



4S6 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Through wish, resolve, and act, our will 
Is moved by undreamed forces still ; 
And no man measures in advance 
His strength with untried circumstance. 

As streams take hue from shade and sun, 
As runs the life the song must run ; 
But, glad or sad, to His good end 
God grant the varying notes may tend ! 



HYMN OF THE DUNKERS 

KLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYL- 
VANIA (1738) 

SISTEK MARIA CHRISTIKA singS. 

Wake, sisters, wake ! the day-star shines ; 
Above Ephrata's eastern pines 
The dawn is breaking, cool and calm. 
Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm ! 

Praised be the Lord for shade and light, 
For toil by day, for rest by night ! 
Praised be His name who deigns to bless 
Our Kedar of the wilderness ! 

Our refuge when the spoiler's hand 
Was heavy on our native land ; 
And freedom, to her children due, 
The wolf and vulture only knew. 

We praised Him when to prison led, 
We owned Him when the stake blazed red ; 
We knew, whatever might befall, 
His love and power were over all. 

He heard our prayers ; with outstretched 

arm 
He led us forth from cruel harm ; 
Still, wheresoe'er our steps were bent, 
His cloud and fire before us went 1 

The watch of faith and prayer He set, 
We kept it then, we keep it yet. 
At midnight, crow of cock, or noon, 
He Cometh sure. He cometh soon. 

He comes to chasten, not destroy, 
To purge the earth from sin's alloy. 
At last, at last shall all confess 
His mercy as His righteousness. 

The dead shall live, the sick be whole. 
The scarlet sin be white as wool ; 



No discord mar below, above. 
The music of eternal love ! 

Sound, welcome trump, the last alarm ! 
Lord God of hosts, make bare thine arm. 
Fulfil this day our long desire. 
Make sweet and clean the world with fire \ 

Sweep, flaming besom, sweep from sight 
The lies of time ; be swift to smite, 
Sharp sword of God, all idols down, 
Genevan creed and Roman crown. 

Quake, earth, through all thy zones, till 

all 
The fanes of pride and priestcraft fall 
And lift thou up in place of them 
Thy gates of pearl, Jerusalem ! 

Lo ! rising from baptismal flame. 
Transfigured, glorious, yet the same, 
Within the heavenly city's bound 
Our Kloster Kedar shall be found. 

He cometh soon ! at dawn or noon 

Or set of sun, He cometh soon. 

Our prayers shall meet Him on His way ; 

Wake, sisters, wake ! arise and pray ! 



GIVING AND TAKING 

I have attempted to put in English verse a 
prose translation of a poem by Tinnevaluva, a 
Hindoo poet of the third century of our era. 

Who gives and hides the giving hand, 
Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise. 
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs 

The burden of the sea and land. 

Who gives to whom hath naught been given. 
His gift in need, though small indeed 
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed, 

Is large as earth and rich as heaven. 

Forget it not, O man, to whom 

A gift shall fall, while yet on earth ; 
Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth 

Recall it in the lives to come. 

Who broods above a wrong in thought 
Sins much ; but greater sin is his 
Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses, 

Shall count the holy alms as naught. 



THE VISION OF ECHARD 



457 



Who dares to curse the hands that bless 
Shall know of sin the deadliest cost ; 
The patience of the heavens is lost 

Beholding man's uuthankfulness. 

For he who breaks all laws may still 
In Sivam's mercy be forgiven ; 
But none can save, in earth or heaven, 

The wretch who answers good with ill. 



THE VISION OF ECHARD 

The Benedictine Echard 

Sat by the wayside well. 
Where Marsberg sees the bridal 

Of the Sarre and the Moselle. 

Fair with its sloping vineyards 
And tawny chestnut bloom, 

The happy vale Ausonius sung 
For holy Treves made room. 

On the shrine Helena builded 
To keep the Christ coat well, 

On minster tower and kloster cross, 
The westering sunshine fell. 

There, where the rock-hewn circles 
O'erlooked the Roman's game, 

The veil of sleep fell on him. 

And his thought a dream became. 

He felt the heart of silence 
Throb with a soundless word, 

And by the inward ear alone 
A spirit's voice he heard. 

And the spoken word seemed written 
On air and wave and sod, 

And the bending walls of sapphire 
Blazed with the thought of God : 

" What lack I, O my children ? 
All things are in my hand ; 
The vast earth and the awful stars 
I hold as grains of sand. 

" Need I your alms ? The silver 

And gold are mine alone ; 

The gifts ye bring before me 

Were evermore my own. 

" Heed I the noise of viols. 

Your pomp of masque and show ? 



Have I not dawns and sunsets ? 
Have I not winds that blow ? 

" Do I smell your gums of incense ? 
Is my ear with chautings fed ? 
Taste I your wine of worship, 
Or eat your holy bread ? 

" Of rank and name and honors 
Am I vain as ye are vain ? 
What can Eternal Fulness 
From your lip-service gain ? 

" Ye make me not your debtor 
Who serve yourselves alone ; 
Ye boast to me of homage 
Whose gain is all your own. 

" For you I gave the prophets, 
For you the Psalmist's lay : 
For you the law's stone tables, 
And holy book and day. 

" Ye change to weary burdens 
The helps that should uplift ; 
Ye lose in form the spirit, 
The Giver in the gift. 

" Who called ye to self-torment, 
To fast and penance vain ? 
Dream ye Eternal Goodness 
Has joy in mortal pain ? 

" For the death in life of Nitria, 
For your Chartreuse ever dumb, 
What better is the neighbor. 
Or happier the home ? 

" Who counts his brother's welfare 
As sacred as his own, 
And loves, forgives and pities. 
He serveth me alone. 

" I note each gracious purpose. 
Each kindly word and deed ; 
Are ye not all my children ? 
Shall not the Father heed ? 

" No prayer for light and guidance 
Is lost upon mine ear : 
The child's cry in the darkness 
Shall not the Father hear ? 

" I loathe your wrangling couucilSi 
I tread upon your creeds ; 



458 RELIGIOUS POEMS 


Who made ye mine avengers, 
Or told ye of my needs ; 


The far is even as the near, 
The low is as the high. 


" I bless men and ye curse them, 
I love them and ye hate ; 
Ye bite and tear each other, 
I suffer long and wait. 


" What if the earth is hiding 

Her old faiths, long outworn ? 

What is it to the changeless truth 

That yours shall fail in turn ? 


" Ye bow to ghastly symbols, 

To cross and scourge and thorn ; 
Ye seek his Syrian manger 
Who in the heart is born. 


" What if the o'erturned altar 
Lays bare the ancient lie ? 
What if the dreams and legends 
Of the world's childhood die ? 


« For the dead Christ, not the living, 
Ye watch His empty grave, 
Whose life alone within you 
Has power to bless and save. 


" Have ye not still my witness 
Within yourselves alway, 
My hand that on the keys of life 
For bliss or bale I lay ? 


" blind ones, outward groping. 
The idle quest forego ; 
Who listens to His inward voice 
Alone of Him shall know. 


" Still, in perpetual judgment, 
I hold assize within. 
With sure reward of holiness, 
And dread rebuke of sin. 


" His love all love exceeding 
The heart must needs recall, 
Its self-surrendering freedom, 
Its loss that gaineth all. 


" A light, a guide, a warning, 
A presence ever near, 
Through the deep silence of the flesh 
I reach the inward ear. 


" Climb not the holy mountains. 
Their eagles know not me ; 
Seek not the Blessed Islands, 
I dwell not in the sea. 


" My Gerizim and Ebal 

Are in each human soul, 
The still, small voice of blessing, 
And Sinai's thunder-roll. 


" Gone is the mount of Meru, 
The triple gods are gone, 
And, deaf to all the lama's prayers, 
The Buddha slumbers on. 


"The stern behest of duty. 

The doom-book open thrown. 
The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, 
Are with yourselves alone." 


" No more from rocky Horeb 
The smitten waters gush ; 
Fallen is Bethel's ladder. 

Quenched is the burning bush. 


A gold and purple sunset 

Flowed down the broad Moselle ; 
On hills of vine and meadow lands 

The peace of twilight fell. 


" The jewels of the Urim 

And Thummim all are dim ; 
The fire has left the altar, 
The sign the teraphim. 


A slow, cool wind of evening 
Blew over leaf and bloom ; 

And, faint and far, the Angelus 
Rang from Saint Matthew's tomb. 


«* No more in ark or hill grove 
The Holiest abides ; 
Not in the scroll's dead letter 
The eternal secret hides. 


Then up rose Master Echard, 
And marvelled : " Can it be 

That here, in dream and vision. 
The Lord hath talked with me ? " 


" The eye shall fail that searches 
For me the hollow sky ; 


He went his way ; behind him 
The shrines of saintly dead, 



THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER 



459 



The holy coat and nail of cross, 


A kindly thought on her 


He left uuvisited. 


Who bade this fountain flow, 




Yet hath no other claim 


He sought the vale of Eltzbach 


Than as the minister 


His burdened soul to free, 


Of blessing in God's name. 


Where the foot-hills of the Eifel 


Drink, and in His peace go I 


Are glassed in Laachersee. 




And, in his Order's kloster, 


THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER 


He sat, in night-long parle, 




With Tauler of the Friends of God, 


In the minister's morning sermon 


And Nicolas of Basle. 


He had told of the primal fall. 




And how thenceforth the wrath of God 


And lo ! the twain made answer : 


Rested on each and all. 


" Yea, brother, even thus 




The Voice above all voices 


And how of His will and pleasure, 


Hath spoken unto us. 


All souls, save a chosen few. 




Were doomed to the quenchless burning, 


" The world will have its idols, 


And held in the way thereto. 


And flesh and sense their sign : 




But the blinded eyes shall open, 


Yet never by faith's unreason 


And the gross ear be fine. 


A saintlier soul was tried, 




And never the harsh old lesson 


" What if the vision tarry ? 


A tenderer heart belied. 


God's time is always best ; 




The true Light shall be witnessed, 


And, after the painful service 


The Christ within confessed. 


On that pleasant Sabbath day, 




He walked with his little daughter 


" In mercy or in judgment 


Through the apple-bloom of May. 


He shall tiu-n and overturn. 




Till the heart shall be His temple 


Sweet in the fresh green meadows 


Where all of Him shall learn." 


Sparrow and blackbird sung ; 




Above him their tinted petals 




The blossoming orchards hung. 


INSCRIPTIONS 






Around on the wonderful glory 


ON A SUN-DIAL 


The minister looked and smiled ; 


FOR DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH 


" How good is the Lord who gives us 

These gifts from His hand, my child 1 


With warning hand I mark Time's rapid 




flight 


" Behold in the bloom of apples 


From life's glad morning to its solemn 


And the violets in the sward 


night ; 


A hint of the old, lost beauty 


Yet, through the dear God's love, I also 


Of the Garden of the Lord ! " 


show 




There 's Light above me by the Shade be- 


Then up spake the little maiden, 


low. 


Treading on snow and pink : 




" father ! these pretty blossoms 


ON A FOUNTAIN 


Are very wicked, I think. 


FOR DOROTHEA L. DIX 


" Had there been no Garden of Eden 




There never had been a fall ; 


Stranger and traveller, 


And if never a tree had blossomed 


Drink freely and bestow 


God would have loved us all." 



460 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



" Hush, child ! " the father answered, 

" By His decree man fell ; 
His ways are in clouds and darkness, 

But He doeth all things well. 

" And whether by His ordaining 

To us Cometh good or ill, 
Joy or pain, or light or shadow, 

We must fear and love Him still." 

** Oh, I fear Him ! " said the daughter, 
" And I try to love Him, too ; 

But I wish He was good and gentle, 
Kind and loving as you." 

The minister groaned in spirit 
As the tremulous lips of pain 

And wide, wet eyes uplifted 
Questioned his own in vain. 

Bowing his head he pondered 
The words of the little one ; 

Had he erred in his life-long teaching ? 
Had he wrong to his Master done ? 

To what grim and dreadful idol 
Had he lent the holiest name ? 

Did his own heart, loving and human, 
The God of his worship shame ? 

And lo ! from the bloom and greenness. 
From the tender skies above, 

And the face of his little daughter, 
He read a lesson of love. 

No more as the cloudy terror 

Of Sinai's mount of law. 
But as Christ in the Syrian lilies 

The vision of God he saw. 

And, as when, in the clefts of Horeb, 
Of old was His presence known, 

The dread Ineffable Glory 
Was Infinite Goodness alone. 

Thereafter his hearers noted 

In his prayers a tenderer strain, 

And never the gospel of hatred 
Burned on his lips again. 

And the scoffing tongue was prayerful, 
And the blinded eyes found sight. 

And hearts, as flint aforetime, 

Grew soft in his warmth and light. 



BY THEIR WORKS 

Call him not heretic whose works attest 
His faith in goodness by no creed confessed. 
Whatever in love's name is truly done 
To free the bound and lift the fallen one 
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and 

word 
Is not against Him labors for our Lord. 
When He, who, sad and weary, longing 

sore 
For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' 

door. 
One saw the heavenly, one the human guest, 
But who shall say which loved the Master 

best? 



THE WORD 

Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known 
Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, 
Warning, approving, true and wise and 
pure. 
Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none ! 
By thee the mystery of life is read ; 

The picture-writing of the world's gray 

seers. 
The myths and parables of the primal 
years. 
Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted 
Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, 
And in the soul's vernacular express 
The common law of simple righteous- 
ness. 
Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds 
May well be felt : the unpardonable sin 
Is to deny the Word of God within ! 



THE BOOK 

Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 
A minster rich in holy effigies. 
And bearing on entablature and frieze 
The hieroglyphic oracles of old. 
Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit ; 
And the low chancel side-lights half ac- 
quaint 
The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, 
and saint. 
Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubt- 
ful writ ! 



ORIENTAL MAXIMS 



461 



But only when on form and word obscure 
Falls from above the white supernal 

light 
We read the mystic characters aright, 
And life informs the silent portraiture, 
Until we pause at last, awe-held, before 
The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and 
adore. 



REQUIREMENT 

We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the 
slave 
Of text and legend. Reason's voice and 

God's, 
Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. 
What asks our Father of His children, save 
Justice and mercy and humility, 
A reasonable service of good deeds. 
Pure living, tenderness to human needs, 
Reverence and trust, and prayer for light 

to see 

The Master's footprints in our daily ways ? 

No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife. 

But the calm beauty of an ordered life 

Whose very breathing is unworded 

praise ! — 
A life that stands as all true lives have 

stood, 
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. 



HELP 

Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task 
Thus set before thee. If it proves at 

length, 
As well it may, beyond thy natural 
strength, 
Faint not, despair not. As a child may ask 
A father, pray the Everlasting Good 

For light and guidance midst the subtle 

snares 
Of sin thick planted in life's thorough- 
fares, 
For spiritual strength and moral hardihood ; 
Still listening, through the noise of time 
and sense, 
To the still whisper of the Inward Word ; 
Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard, 
Itself its own confirming evidence : 
To health of soul a voice to cheer and please. 
To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides. 



UTTERANCE 

But what avail inadequate words to reach 
The innermost of Truth ? Who shall 

essay. 
Blinded and weak, to point and lead the 
way. 
Or solve the mystery in familiar speech ? 
Yet, if it be that something not thy own. 
Some shadow of the Thought to which 

our schemes. 
Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but 
dreams, 
Is even to thy unworthiness made known. 
Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst 
not dare 
To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine 
The real seem false, the beauty undi- 
vine. 
So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, 
Give what seems given thee. It may prove 

a seed 
Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of 
need. 



ORIENTAL MAXIMS 



PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLA- 
TIONS 

THE INWARD JUDGE 

From Institutes of Manu. 

The soul itself its awful witness is. 
Say not in evil doing, " No one sees," 
And so offend the conscious One within, 
Whose ear can hear the silences of sin 
Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping 

see 
The secret motions of iniquity. 

Nor in thy folly say, " I am alone." 
For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne, 
The ancient Judge and Witness liveth 

still. 
To note thy act and thought ; and as thy 

ill 
Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy 

reach, 
The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on 

each. 



462 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



LAYING UP TREASURE 

From the Mahabhdrata. 

Before the Euder comes, whose charioteer 
Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year 
Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that 

kings 
Nor thieves can take away. When all the 

things 
Thou callest thine, goods, pleasures, honors 

fall. 
Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all. 

CONDUCT 

From the Mahabhdrata. 

Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day 
Which from the night shall drive thy peace 

away. 
In months of sun so live that months of rain 
Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain 
Evil and cherish good, so shall there be 
Another and a happier life for thee. 



AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT 

O dearest bloom the seasors know, 
Flowers of the Resurrection, blow, 

Our hope and faith restore ; 
And through the bitterness of death 
And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath 

Of life forevermore ! 

The thought of Love Immortal blends 
With fond remembrances of friends ; 

In you, O sacred flowers, 
By human love made doubly sweet, 
The heavenly and the earthly meet, 

The heart of Christ and ours ! 



THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS 

" All hail ! " the bells of Christmas rang, 
" All hail ! " the monks at Christmas sang, 
The merry monks who kept with cheer 
The gladdest day of all their year. 

But still apart, unmoved thereat, 
A pious elder brother sat 



Silent, in his accustomed place. 

With God's sweet peace upon his face. 

" Why sitt'st thou thus ? " his brethren 

cried. 
" It is the blessed Christmas-tide ; 
The Christmas lights are all aglow, 
The sacred lilies bud and blow. 

" Above our heads the joy-bells ring, 
Without the happy children sing. 
And all God's creatures hail the morn 
On which the holy Christ was born ! 

" Rejoice with us ; no more rebuke 
Our gladness with thy quiet look." 
The gray monk answered : " Keep, I pray, 
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday. 

" Let heathen Yule fires flicker red 
Where thronged refectory feasts are 

spread ; 
With mystery-play and masque and mime 
And wait-songs speed the holy time ! 

" The blindest faith may haply save ; 
The Lord accepts the things we have ; 
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays, 
May find at last the shining ways. 

" They needs must grope who cannot see, 

The blade before the ear must be ; 

As ye are feeling I have felt, 

And where ye dwell I too have dwelt. 

" But now, beyond the things of sense, 
Beyond occasions and events, 
I know, through God's exceeding grace. 
Release from form and time and place. 

" I listen, from no mortal tongue. 
To hear the song the angels sung; 
And wait within myself to know 
The Christmas lilies bud and blow. 

" The outward symbols disappear 
From him whose inward sight is clear ; 
And small must be the choice of days 
To him who fills them all with praise I 

" Keep while you need it, brothers mine. 
With honest zeal your Christmas sign. 
But judge not him who every morn 
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born ! " 



WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET 



463 



AT LAST 

[Recited by one of the little group of rela- 
tions, who stood by the poet's bedside, as the 
last moment of his life approached.] 

When on my day of life the night is fall- 
ing, 
And, in the %vinds from unsunned spaces 
blown, 
I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
My feet to paths unknown, 

Thou who hast made my home of life so 
pleasant, 
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; 

Love Divine, O Helper ever present, 
Be Thou my strength and stay ! 

Be near me when all else is from me drift- 
ing; 
Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of 
shade and shine, 
And kindly faces to my own uplifting 
The love which answers mine. 

1 have but Thee, my Father ! let Thy spirit 
Be with me then to comfort and uphold ; 

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I 
merit, 
Nor street of shining gold. 

Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned, 
And both forgiven through Thy abound- 
ing grace — 

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
Unto my fitting place. 

Some humble door among Thy many man- 
sions. 
Some sheltering shade where sin and 
striving cease. 
And flows forever through heaven's green 
expansions 
The river of Thy peace. 

There, from the music round about me 
stealing, 
I fain would learn the new and holy 
song. 
And find at last, beneath Thy trees of 
healing. 
The life for which I long. 



WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID 
AT SUNSET 

The shadows grow and deepen round me, 

I feel the dew-fall in the air ; 
The muezzin of the darkening thicket, 

I hear the night-thrush call to prayer. 

The evening wind is sad with farewells, 
And loving hands unclasp from mine ; 

Alone I go to meet the darkness 
Across an awful boundary-line. 

As from the lighted hearths behind me 
I pass with slow, reluctant feet, 

What waits me in the land of strangeness ? 
What face shall smile, what voice shall 
greet ? 

What space shall awe, what brightness 
blind me ? 

What thunder-roll of music stim ? 
What vast processions sweep before me 

Of shapes unknown beneath the sun ? 

I shrink from unaccustomed glory, 
I dread the myriad-voiced strain ; 

Give me the unforgotteu faces. 
And let my lost ones speak again. 

He will not chide my mortal yearning 
Who is our Brother and our Friend ; 

In whose full life, divine and human, 
The heavenly and the earthly blend. 

Mine be the joy of soul-communion, 

The sense of spiritual strength renewed, 

The reverence for the pure and holy, 
The dear delight of doing good. 

No fitting ear is mine to listen 

An endless anthem's rise and fall ; 

No curious eye is mine to measure 
The pearl gate and the jasper wall. 

For love must needs be more than know* 
ledge : 

What matter if I never know 
Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy. 

Or warmer Sirius white as snow ! 

Forgive my human words, O Father ! 
I go Thy larger truth to prove ; 



464 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Thy mercy shall transcend my longing : 
I seek but love, and Thou art Love ! 

I go to find my lost and mourned for 
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still, 

And all that hope and faith foreshadow 
Made perfect in Thy holy will ! 



"THE STORY OF IDA" 

Francesca Alexander, whose pen and pencil 
have so reverently transcribed the simple faith 
and life of the Italian peasantry, wrote the 
narrative pubhshed with John Ruskin's intro- 
duction under the title, The Story of Ida. 

Weary of jangling noises never stilled, 
The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the 

din 
Of clashing texts, the webs of creed 
men spin 
Round simple truth, the children grown 

who build 
With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, 
Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings 
And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things, 
I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from 

them 
To the sweet story of the Florentine 
Immortal in her blameless maidenhood. 
Beautiful as God's angels and as good ; 
Feeling that life, even now, may be divine 
With love no wrong can ever change to 

hate. 
No sin make less than all-compassionate ! 



THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT 

A TENDER child of summers three, 
Seeking her little bed at night. 

Paused on the dark stair timidly. 

" Oh, mother ! Take my hand," said she, 
" And then the dark will all be light." 

We older children grope our way 

From dark behind to dark before ; 
And only when our hands we lay. 
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day, 
And there is darkness nevermore. 

Reach downward to the sunless days 

Wherein our guides are blind as we, 
And faith is small and hope delays ; 



Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise, 
And let us feel the light of Thee ! 



THE TWO LOVES 

Smoothing soft the nestling head 

Of a maiden fancy-led. 

Thus a grave-eyed woman said : 

" Richest gifts are those we make, 
Dearer than the love we take 
That we give for love's own sake. 

" Well I know the heart's unrest ; 
Mine has been the common quest. 
To be loved and therefore blest. 

" Favors undeserved were mine ; 
At my feet as on a shrine 
Love has laid its gifts divine. 

" Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet 
With their sweetness came regret. 
And a sense of unpaid debt. 

" Heart of mine unsatisfied, 
Was it vanity or pride 
That a deeper joy denied ? 

" Hands that ope but to receive 
Empty close ; they only live 
Richly who can richly give. 

" Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes, 
" Love is sweet in any guise ; 
But its best is sacrifice ! 

" He who, giving, does not crave 
Likest is to Him who gave 
Life itself the loved to save. 

" Love, that self-forgetful gives. 
Sows surprise of ripened sheaves, 
Late or soon its own receives." 



ADJUSTMENT 

The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must 

shed 
That nearer heaven the living ones may 

climb ; 
The false must fail, though from our 

shores of time 



HYMNS OF THE.BRAHMO SOMAJ 



465 



The old lament be heard, " Great Pan b 

dead ! " 
That wail is Error's, from his high place 
hurled ; 
This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod ; 
Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God 
Troubling w'th life the waters of the world. 
Even as they list the winds of the Spirit 
blow 
To turn or break our century - rusted 

vanes ; 
Sands shift and waste; the rock alone 
remains 
Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides 

come and go. 
And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and 

wind, 
Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars 
behind. 

Therefore I trust, although to outward sense 
Both true and false seem shaken ; I will 

hold 
With newer light my reverence for the 
old _ ^ ^ 

And calmly wait the births of Providence. 
No gain is lost ; the clear-eyed saints look 
down 
Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and 

creeds ; 
Love yet remains, its rosary of good 
deeds 
Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town. 
Truth has charmed life ; the Inward Word 
survives, 
And, day by day, its revelation brings ; 
Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever 
things 
Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy 

lives 
Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told, 
And the new gospel verifies the old. 



HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO 
SOMAJ 

I have attempted this paraphrase of the 
Hymis of the Brahrao Somaj of India, as I 
find them in Mozoomdar's account of the devo- 
tional exercises of that remarkable relipfious 
development which has attracted far less atten- 
tion and sympathy from the Christian world 
than it deserves, as a fresh revelation of the 
direct action of the Divine Spirit upon the hu- 
man heart. 



The mercy, O Eternal One ! 

By man unmeasured yet, 
In joy or grief, in shade or sun, 

I never will forget. 
I give the whole, and not a part, 

Of all Thou gavest me ; 
My goods, my life, my soul and heart, 

I yield them all to Thee ! 



We fast and plead, we weep and pray. 

From morning until even ; 
We feel to find the holy way. 

We knock at the gate of heaven I 
And when in silent awe we wait, 

And word and sign forbear. 
The hinges of the golden gate 

Move, soundless, to our prayer ! 
Who hears the eternal harmonies 

Can heed no outward word ; 
Blind to all else is he who sees 

The vision of the Lord ! 



soul, be patient, restrain thy tears, 

Have hope, and not despair ; 
As a tender mother heareth her child 

God hears the penitent prayer. 
And not forever shall grief be thine ; 

On the Heavenly Mother's breast. 
Washed clean and white in waters of joy 

Shall His seeking child find rest. 
Console thyself with His word of grace, 

And cease thy wail of woe, 
For His mercy never an equal hath. 

And His love no bounds can know. 
Lean close unto Him in faith and hope ; 

How many like thee have found 
In Him a shelter and home of peace, 

By His mercy compassed round ! 
There, safe from sin and the sorrow it 
brings, 

They sing their grateful psalms. 
And rest, at noon, by the wells of God, 

In the shade of His holy palms ! 

REVELATION 



" And I went into the Vale of Beavor. .and as 1 went I 
preached repentance to the people. And one morning 
sittinff by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and 
a temptation beset me. And it was said : All things 
come by Nature ; and the Elements and the Stars came 
over me. And as I sat still and let it alone, a living 



466 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



hope arose in tne, and a true Voice which said : There 
is a living God u'ho made alt things. And immediately 
the cloud and the temptation vanished, and Life rose 
over all, and my heart was glad and I praised the living 
God." — Journal of George Fox, 1G90. 

Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, 

man of God ! our hope and faith 
The Elements and Stars assail, 

And the awed spirit holds its breath, 
Blown over by a wind of death. 

Takes Nature thought for such as we. 
What place her human atom fills. 

The weed-drift of her careless sea, 
The mist on her imheeding hills ? 
What recks she of our helpless wills ? 

Strange god of Force, with fear, not love. 
Its trembling worshipper ! Can prayer 

Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move 
Unpitying Energy to spare ? 
What doth the cosmic Vastness care ? 

In vain to this dread Unconcern 
For the All-Father's love we look; 

In vain, in quest of it, we turn 

The storied leaves of Nature's book, 
The prints her rocky tablets took. 

I pray for faith, I long to trust ; 

1 listen with my heart, and hear 
A Voice without a sound : " Be just. 

Be true, be merciful, revere 

The Word within thee : God is near ! 

•* A light to sky and earth unknown 
Pales all their lights : a mightier force 



Than theirs the powers of Nature own, 
And, to its goal as at its source, 
His Spirit moves the Universe. 

"Believe and trust. Through stars and 
suns. 
Through life and death, through soul and 
sense. 
His wise, paternal purpose runs ; 
The darkness of His providence 
Is star-lit with benign intents." 

joy supreme ! I know the Voice, 
Like none beside on earth or sea ; 

Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice, 
By all that He requires of me, 
I know what God himself must be. 

No picture to my aid I call, 

I shape no image in my prayer ; 

1 only know in Him is all 

Of life, light, beauty, everywhere, 
Eternal Goodness here and there ! 

I know He is, and what He is, 

Whose one great purpose is the good 

Of all. I rest my soul on His 
Immortal Love and Fatherhood ; 
And trust Him, as His children should. 

I fear no more. The clouded face 

Of Nature smiles ; through all her things 

Of time and space and sense I trace 
The moving of the Spirit's wings. 
And hear the song of hope she sings. 



AT SUNDOWN 



TO E. C. S. 

Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass 
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, 
Let this sUght token of the debt I owe 

Outlive for thee December's frozen day, 
And, like the arbutus budding under snow, 

Take bloom and fragrance from some mom 
of May 
Wlien he who gives it shall have gone the way 
Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall 
know. 



THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888 

Low in the east, against a white, cold 

dawn, 
The black-lined silhouette of the woods was 

drawn. 
And on a wintry waste 
Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and 

brown. 
Through thin cloud-films a pallid ghost 

looked down. 
The waning moon half-faced ! 

In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting 

earth, 
What sign was there of the immortal birth ? 

What herald of the One ? 
Lo ! swift as thought the heavenly radiance 

came, 
A rose-red splendor swept the sky like 
tiame. 
Up rolled the round, bright sun I 

And all was changed. From a transfigured 
world 

The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home- 
hearths curled 
Up the still air unblown. 

In Orient warmth and brightness, did that 
morn 

O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ 
was born. 
Break fairer than our own ? 



The morning's promise noon and eve ful« 

filled 
In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled 

And sunset fair as they ; 
A sweet reminder of His holiest time, 
A summer-miracle in our winter clime, 

God gave a perfect day. 

The near was blended with the old and far, 

And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's 

star 

Seemed here, as there and then, — 

Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian 

palm. 
Our heart's desire the angels' midnight 
psalm, 
Peace, and good-will to men ! 

THE VOW OF WASHINGTON 

Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the 
Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of 
George Washington as the first President of the 
United States. 

The sword was sheathed : in April's sun 
Lay green the fields by Freedom won ; 
And severed sections, weary of debates. 
Joined hands at last and were United 

States. 

O City sitting by the Sea ! 

How proud the day that dawned on thee, 
When the new era, long desired, began. 
And, in its need, the hour had found the 
man ! 

One thought the cannon salvos spoke. 
The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke, 
The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing 

halls, 
And prayer and hymn borne heavenward 
from St. Paul's ! 

How felt the land in every part 
The strong throb of a nation's heart, 



467 



468 



AT SUNDOWN 



As its great leader gave, with reverent awe, 
His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law ! 

That pledge the heavens above him 

heard, 
That vow the sleep of centuries stirred ; 
In world-wide v/onder listening peoples 

bent 
Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment. 

Could it succeed ? Of honor sold 
And hopes deceived all history told. 

Above the wrecks that strewed the mourn- 
ful past, 

Was the long dream of ages true at last ? 

Thank God ! the people's choice was just. 
The one man equal to his trust. 

Wise beyond lore, and without weakness 
good. 

Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude ! 

His rule of justice, order, peace, 
Made possible the world's release ; 
Taught prince and serf that power is but a 

trust, 
And rule alone, which serves the ruled, is 
just; 

That Freedom generous is, but strong 
In hate of fraud and selfish wrong, 
Pretence that turns her holy truth to lies. 
And lawless license masking in her guise. 

Land of his love ! with one glad voice 
Let thy great sisterhood rejoice ; 
A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set, 
And, God be praised, we are one nation yet. 

And still we trust the years to be 
Shall prove his hope was destiny. 
Leaving our flag, with all its added stars, 
Unrent by faction and unstained by wars. 

Lo ! where with patient toil he nursed 
And trained the new-set plant at first. 
The widening branches of a stately tree 
Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea. 

And in its broad and sheltering shade, 
Sitting with none to make afraid. 
Were we now silent, through each mighty 

limb, 
The winds of heaven would sing the praise 
of him. 



Our first and best ! — his ashes lie 
Beneath his own Virginian sky. 
Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave, 
The storm that swept above thy sacred 
grave ! 

For, ever in the awful strife 
And dark hours of the nation's life. 
Through the fierce tumult pierced his 

warning word, 
Their father's voice his erring children 
heard ! 

The change for which he prayed and 

sought 
In that sharp agony was wrought ; 
No partial interest draws its alien line 
'Twixt North and South, the cypress and 
the pine ! 

One people now, all doubt beyond, 
His name shall be our Union-bond ; 

We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and 
now 

Take on our lips the old Centennial vow. 

For rule and trust must needs be ours ; 

Chooser and chosen both are powers 
Equal in service as in rights ; the claim 
Of Duty rests on each and all the same. 

Then let the sovereign millions, where 
Our banner floats in sun and air. 

From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's 
cold. 

Repeat with us the pledge a century old ! 



THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 

The story of the shipwreck of Captain Val- 
entine Bagley, on the coast of Arabia, and his 
sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from 
my childhood. It has been partially told in the 
singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Har- 
riet Prescott SpofFord, on the occasion of a pub- 
lic celebration at the Newburyport Library. 
To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far 
as it goes, nothing can be added ; but in the 
following ballad I have endeavored to give a 
fuller detail of the touching incident upon 
which it is founded. 

From pain and peril, by land and main. 
The shipwrecked sailor came back again ; 



THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 



469 



And like one from the dead, the threshold 

crossed 
Of his wondering- home, that had mourned 

him lost, 

Where he sat once more with his kith and 

kin, 
And welcomed his neighbors thronging in. 

But when morning came he called for his 

spade. 
♦* I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said. 

" Why dig you here ? " asked the passer- 
by ; 

" Is there gold or silver the road so 
nigh ? " 

" No, friend," he answered : " but under 

this sod 
Is the blessed water, the wine of God." 

" Water ! the Powow is at your back. 
And right before you the Merrimac, 

" And look you up, or look you down. 
There 's a well-sweep at every door in 
town." 

"True," he said, "we have wells of our 

own ; 
But this I dig for the Lord alone." 

Said the other : " This soil is dry, you 

know, 
I doubt if a spring can be found below ; 

" You had better consult, before you dig, 
Some water- witch, with a hazel twig." 

" No, wet or dry, I will dig it here, 
Shallow or deep, if it takes a year. 

" In the Arab desert, where shade is none, 
The waterless land of sand and sun, 

" Under the pitiless, brazen sky 

My burning throat as the sand was dry ; 

" My crazed brain listened in fever dreams 
For plash of buckets and ripple of streams ; 

" And opening my eyes to the blinding glare. 
And my lips to the breath of the blistering 
air. 



" Tortured alike by the heavens and earth, 
I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth. 

" Then something tender, and sad, and mild 
As a mother's voice to her wandering child, 

" Rebuked my frenzy ; and bowing my 

head, 
I prayed as I never before had prayed : 

" Pity me, God ! for I die of thirst ; 
Take me out of this land accurst ; 

" And if ever I reach my home again. 
Where earth has springs, and the sky has 
rain, 

"I will dig a well for the passers-by. 
And none shall suffer from thirst as I. 

" I saw, as I prayed, my home once more, 
The house, the barn, the elms by the door, 

" The grass - lined road, that riverward 

wound. 
The tall slate stones of the burying-ground, 

" The belfry and steeple on meeting-house 

hill, 
The brook with its dam, and gray grist miU, 

"And I knew in that vision beyond the 

sea, 
The very place where my well must be. 

" God heard my prayer in that evil day ; 
He led my feet in their homeward way, 

" From false mirage and dried-up well, 
And the hot sand storms of a land of hell, 

" Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's 

A city held in its stony lap, 

" The mosques and the domes of scorched 

Muscat, 
And my heart leaped up with joy thereat ; 

" For there was a ship at anchor lying, 
A Christian flag at its mast-head flying, 

"And sweetest of sounds to my homesick 

ear 
Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer. 



470 



AT SUNDOWN 



"Now the Lord be thanked, I am back 

again, 
Where earth has springs, and the skies have 

rain, 

" And the well I promised by Oman's Sea, 
I am digging for him in Amesbury." 

His kindred wept, and his neighbors said : 
" The poor old captain is out of his head." 

But from morn to noon, and from noon to 

night, 
He toiled at his task with main and might ; 

And when at last, from the loosened earth. 
Under his spade the stream gushed forth, 

And fast as he climbed to his deep well's 

brim, 
The water he dug for followed him, 

He shouted for joy : " I have kept my 

word. 
And here is the well I promised the Lord ! " 

The long years came and the long years 

went, 
And he sat by his roadside well content ; 

He watched the travellers, heat-oppressed, 
Pause by the way to drink and rest. 

And the sweltering horses dip, as they 

drank, 
Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank, 

And grateful at heart, his memory went 
Back to that waterless Orient, 

And the blessed answer of prayer, which 

came 
To the earth of iron and sky of flame. 

And when a wayfarer weary and hot, 
Kept to the mid road, pausing not 

For the well's refreshing, he shook his 

head ; 
"He don't know the value of water," he 



" Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done, 
In the desert circle of sand and sun, 



" He would drink and rest, and go home to 

tell 
That God's best gift is the wayside well I " 



AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION 

The substance of these lines, hastily pen- 
cilled several years ago, I find among such of 
my unprinted scraps as have escaped the waste- 
basket and the fire. In transcribing it I have 
made some changes, additions, and omissions. 

On these green banks, where falls too 

soon 
The shade of Autumn's afternoon. 
The south wind blowing soft and sweet, 
The water gliding at my feet, 
The distant northern range uplit 
By the slant sunshine over it, 
With changes of the mountain mist 
From tender blush to amethyst. 
The valley's stretch of shade and gleam 
Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream. 
With glad young faces smiling near 
And merry voices in my ear, 
I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might 
In Iran's Garden of Delight. 
For Persian roses blushing red, 
Aster and gentian bloom instead ; 
For Shiraz wine, this mountain air • 
For feast, the blueberries which I share 
With one who proffers with stained hands 
Her gleanings from yon pasture lands. 
Wild fruit that art and culture spoil, 
The harvest of an untilled soil ; 
And with her one whose tender eyes 
Reflect the change of April skies, 
Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet, 
Fresh as Spring's earliest violet ; 
And one whose look and voice and ways 
Make where she goes idyllic days ; 
And one whose sweet, still countenance 
Seems dreamful of a child's romance ; 
And others, welcome as are these. 
Like and unlike, varieties 
Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung. 
And all are fair, for all are young. 
Gathered from seaside cities old, 
From midland prairie, lake, and wold, 
From the great wheat-fields, which might 

feed 
The hunger of a world at need. 
In healthful change of rest and play 
Their school-vacations glide away. 



BURNING DRIFT-WOOD 



47 1 



No critics these : they only see 

An old and kindly friend in me, 

111 whose amused, indulgent look 

Their innocent mirth has no rebuke. 

They scarce can kiiow my rugged rhymes, 

The harsher songs of evil times, 

Nor graver themes in minor keys 

Of life's and death's solemnities •- 

But haply, as they bear in mind 

Some verse of lighter, happier kiiid^ — 

Hints of the boyhood of the man, 

Youth viewed from life's meridian, 

Half seriously and half in play 

My pleasant interviewers pay 

Their visit, with no fell intent 

Of taking notes and punishment. 

As yonder solitary pine 
Is ringed below with flower and vine, 
More favored than that lonely tree, 
The bloom of girlhood circles me. 
In such an atmosphere of youth 
I half forget my age's truth ; 
The shadow of my life's long date 
Runs backward on the dial-plate. 
Until it seems a step might span 
The gulf between the boy and man. 

My young friends smile, as if some jay 
On bleak December's leafless spray 
Essayed to sing the songs of May. 
Well, let them smile, and live to know, 
When their brown locks are flecked with 

snow, 
'T is tedious to be always sage 
And pose the dignity of age. 
While so much of our early lives 
On memory's playground still survives. 
And owns, as at the present hour, 
The spell of youth's magnetic power. 

But though I feel, with Solomon, 

'T is pleasant to behold the sim, 

I would not if I could repeat 

A life which still is good and sweet ; 

I keep in age, as in my prime, 

A not uncheerful step with time, 

And, grateful for all blessings sent, 

I go the common way, content 

To make no new experiment. 

On easy terms with law and fate. 

For what must be I calmly wait. 

And trust the path I cannot see, — 

That God is good sufHceth me. 

And when at last on life's strange play 



The curtain falls, I only pray 
That hope may lose itself in truth, 
And age in Heaven's immortal youth. 
And all our loves and longing prove 
The foretaste of diviner love ! 

The day is done. Its afterglow 

Along the west is burning low. 

My visitors, like birds, have flown ; 

I hear their voices, fainter grown. 

And dimly through the dusk I see 

Their kerchiefs wave good-night to me, — ' 

Light hearts of girlhood, knowing naught 

Of all the cheer their coming brought ; 

And, in their going, unaware 

Of silent-following feet of prayer : 

Heaven make their budding promise good 

With flowers of gracious womanhood ! 



R. S. S. AT DEER ISLAND ON 
THE MERRIMAC 

Make, for he loved thee well, our Merri- 
mac. 
From wave and shore a low and long 

lament 
For him whose last look sought thee, as 
he went 
The unknown wa}^ from which no step 

comes back. 
And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose 
feet 
He watched in life the sunset's redden- 
ing glow. 
Let the soft south wind through your 
needles blow 
A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet ! 
No fonder lover of all lovely things 

Shall walk where once he walked, no 

smile more glad 
Greet friends than his who friends in all 
men had. 
Whose pleasant memory co that Island 

clings, 
Where a dear mourner in the home he left 
Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft. 



BURNING DRIFT-WOOD 

Before my drift-wood fire I sit. 
And see, Nvith every waif I burn, 

Old dreams and fancies coloring it, 
And folly's unlaid ghosts return. 



472 



AT SUNDOWN 



O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft 
The enchanted sea on which they sailed, 

Are these poor fragments only left 

Of vain desires and hopes that failed ? 

Did I not watch from them the light 
Of sunset on my towers in Spain, 

And see, far off, uploom in sight 

The Fortunate Isles I might not gain ? 

Did sudden lift of fog reveal 

Arcadia's vales of song and spring. 

And did I pass, with grazing keel. 
The rocks whereon the sirens sing ? 

Have I not drifted hard upon 

The unmapped Vegions lost to man. 

The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John, 
The palace domes of Kubla Khan ? 

Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers, 
Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills ? 

Did Love make sign from rose blown bow- 
ers. 
And gold from Eldorado's hills ? 

Alas ! the gallant ships, that sailed 
On blind Adventure's errand sent, 

Howe'er they laid their courses, failed 
To reach the haven of Content. 

And of my ventures, those alone 

Which Love had freighted, safely sped, 

Seeking a good beyond my own, 
By clear-eyed Duty piloted. 

mariners, hoping still to meet 
The luck Arabian voyagers met. 

And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, 
Haroun al Raschid walking yet, 

Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, 
The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. 

1 turn from all that only seems. 

And seek the sober grounds of truth. 

What matter that it is not May, 

That birds have flown, and trees are 
bare. 
That darker grows the shortening day, 

And colder blows the wintry air ! 

The wrecks of passion and desire, 
The castles I no more rebuild. 



May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, 

And warm the hands that age has chilled. 

Whatever perished with my ships, 
I only know the best remains ; 

A song of praise is on my lips 

For losses which are now my gains. 

Heap high my hearth ! No worth is lost ; 

No wisdom with the folly dies. 
Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust 

Shall be my evening sacrifice ! 

Far more than all I dared to dream. 
Unsought before my door I see ; 

On wings of fire and steeds of steam 
The world's great wonders come to me, 

And holier signs, unmarked before, 
Of Love to seek and Power to save, — 

The righting of the wronged and poor, 
The man evolving from the slave ; 

And life, no longer chance or fate, 
Safe in the gracious Patherhood. 

I fold o'er- wearied hands and wait, 
In full assurance of the good. 

And well the waiting time must be. 
Though brief or long its granted days, 

If Faith and Hope and Charity 

Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze. 

And with them, friends whom Heaven has 



Whose love my heart has comforted. 
And, sharing all my joys, has shared 
My tender memories of the dead, — 

Dear souls who left us lonely here. 

Bound on their last, long voyage, to 
whom 

We, day by day, are drawing near. 
Where every bark has sailing room. 

I know the solemn monotone 

Of waters calling unto me ; 
I know from whence the airs have blown 

That whisper of the Eternal Sea. 

As low my fires of drift-wood burn, 
I hear that sea's deep soiuuls increase, 

And, fair in sunset light, discern 
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace. 



HAVERHILL 



473 



O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTI- 
ETH BIRTHDAY 

Climbing a path which leads back never 
more 
We heard behind his footsteps and his 
cheer ; 
Now, face to face, we greet hiin standing 

here 
Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore ! 
Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened 
day 
Is closing and the shadows colder grow, 
His genial presence, like an afterglow. 
Following the one just vanishing away. 
Long be it ere the table shall be set 
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat, 
And love repeat with smiles and tears 
thereat 
His own sweet songs that time shall not 

forget. 
Waiting with us the call to come up higher, 
Life is not less, the heavens are only nigher ! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

From purest wells of English iindefiled 
None deeper drank than he, the New 

World's child, 
Who in the language of their farm-fields 

spoke 
The wit and wisdom of New England folk. 
Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world- 
wide laugh 
Provoked thereby might well have shaken 

half 
The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball 
And mine of battle overthrew them all. 



HAVERHILL 

I 640-1 890 

Read at the Celebration of the Two Hun- 
dred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the City, 
July 2, 1890. 

O RIVER winding to the sea ! 
We call the old time back to thee ; 
From forest paths and water-ways 
The century-woven veil we raise. 



The voices of to-day are dumb, 
Unheard its sounds that go and come ; 
We listen, through long-lapsing years, 
To footsteps of the pioneers. 

Gone steepled town and cidtured plain, 

The wilderness returns again, 

The drear, untrodden solitude. 

The gloom and mystery of the wood ! 

Once more the bear and panther prowl, 
The wolf repeats his hungry liowl. 
And, peering through his leafy screen, 
The Indian's copper face is seen. 

We see, their rude-built huts beside, 
Grave men and women anxious-eyed, 
And wistful youth remembering still 
Dear homes in England's Haverhill. 

We summon forth to mortal view 
Dark Passaquo and Saggahew, — 
Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway 
Of wizard Passaconaway. 

Weird memories of the border town, 
By old tradition handed down. 
In chance and change before us pass 
Like pictures in a magic glass, — 

The terrof of the midnight raid. 
The death-concealing ambuscade. 
The winter march, through deserts wild, 
Of captive mother, wife, and child. 

Ah ! bleeding hands alone subdued 
And tamed the savage habitude 
Of forests hiding beasts of prey, 
And human shapes as fierce as they. 

Slow from the plough the woods withdrew, 
Slowly each year the corn-lands grew ; 
Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill 
The Saxon energy of will. 

And never in the hamlet's bound 
Was lack of sturdy manhood found, 
And never failed the kindred good 
Of brave and helpful womanhood. 

That hamlet now a city is, 
Its log-built huts are palaces ; 
The wood-path of the settler's cow 
Is Traffic's crowded highway now. 



474 



AT SUNDOWN 



And far and wide it stretches still, 
Along its southward sloping hill, 
And overlooks on either hand 
A rich and many-watered land. 

And, gladdening all the landscape, fair 

As Pison was to Eden's pair. 

Our river to its valley brings 

The blessing of its mountain springs. 

And Nature holds with narrowing space. 
From mart and crowd, her old - time 

grace, 
And guards with fondly jealous arms 
The wild growths of outlying farms. 

Her sunsets on Kenoza fall, 
Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall ; 
No lavished gold can richer make 
Her opulence of hill and lake. 

Wise was the choice which led our sires 
To kindle here their household fires, 
And share the large content of all 
Whose lines in pleasant places fall. 

More dear, as years on years advance, 
We prize the old inheritance. 
And feel, as far and wide we roam. 
That all we seek we leave at home. 

Our palms are pines, our oranges 
Are apples on our orchard trees ; 
Our thrushes are our nightingales. 
Our larks the blackbirds of our vales. 

No incense which the Orient burns 
Is sweeter than our hillside ferns ; 
What tropic splendor can outvie 
Our autumn woods, our sunset sky ? 

If, where the slow years eame^ and went, 
And left not affluence, but content, 
Now flashes in our dazzled eyes 
The electric light of enterprise ; 

And if the old idyllic ease 

Seems lost in keen activities. 

And crowded workshops now replace 

The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace ; 

No dull, mechanic round of toil 
Life's morning charm can quite despoil ; 
And youth and beauty, hand in hand, 
Will always find enchanted land. 



No task is ill where hand and brain 
And skill and strength have equal gain, 
And each shall each in honor hold. 
And simple manhood outweigh gold. 

Earth shall be near to Heaven when all 
That severs man from man shall fall, 
For, here or there, salvation's plan 
Alone is love of God and mau. 

dwellers by the Merrimac, 

The heirs of centuries at your back. 
Still reaping where you have not sown, 
A broader field is now your own. 

Hold fast your Puritan heritage. 
But let the free thought of the age 
Its light and hope and sweetness add 
To the stern faith the fathers had. 

Adrift on Time's returnless tide. 
As waves that follow waves, we glide. 
God grant we leave upon the shore 
Some waif of good it lacked before ; 

Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth, 
Some added beauty to the earth ; 
Some larger hope, some thought to make 
The sad world happier for its sake. 

As tenants of uncertain stay. 
So may we live our little day 
That only grateful hearts shall fill 
The homes we leave in Haverhill. 

The singer of a farewell rhyme. 
Upon whose outmost verge of time 
The shades of night are falling down, 

1 pray, God bless the good old town ! 

TO G. G. 

AN AUTOGRAPH 

The daug'hter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., dele- 
gate from Haverhill, England, to the two hun- 
dred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of Ha- 
verhill, Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward 
of the former place and many of his old par- 
ishioners were the pioneer settlers of the new 
town on the Merrimac. 

Graceful in name and in thyself, our 
river 
None fairer saw in John Ward's pilgrim 
flock. 



THE BIRTHDAY WREATH 



475 



Proof that upon their century-rooted 
stock 
The English roses bloom as fresh as ever. 

Take the warm welcome of new friends 
with thee, 
And listening to thy home's familiar 

chime 
Dream that thou hearest, with it keep- 
ing time, 
The bells on Merrimac sound across the 



Think of our thrushes, when the lark sings 
clear. 
Of our sweet Mayflowers when the dai- 
sies bloom ; 
And bear to our and thy ancestral home 
The kindly greeting of its children here. 

Say that our love survives the severing 
strain ; 
That the New England, with the Old, 

holds fast 
The proud, fond memories of a common 
past ; 
Unbroken still the ties of blood remain 1 



INSCRIPTION 

For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved 
upon the huge boulder in Denver Park, Col., 
and representing the Last Indian and the Last 
Bison. 

The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown 

peaks. 
For the wild hunter and the bison seeks. 
In the changed world below ; and finds 

alone 
Their graven semblance in the eternal 

stone. 



LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY 

Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ 
Church at Hartford, Conn. 

She sang alone, ere womanhood had known 
The gift of song which fills the air to- 
day : 

Tender and sweet, a music all her own 
May fitly linger where she knelt to pray. 



MILTON 

Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. 
Margaret's Church, Westminster, the gift of 
George W. Childs, of America. 

The new world honors him whose lofty 
plea 
For England's freedom made her own 
more sure. 
Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall 
be 
Their common freehold while both worlds 
endure. 



THE BIRTHDAY WREATH 

December 17, 189L 

Blossom and greenness, making all 
The winter birthday tropical 

And the plain Quaker parlors gay, 
Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall ; 
We saw them fade, and droop, and fall, 

And laid them tenderly away. 

White virgin lilies, mignonette. 
Blown rose, and pink, and violet, 

A breath of fragrance passing by ; 
Visions of beauty and decay. 
Colors and shapes that could not stay, 

The fairest, sweetest, first to die. 

But still this rustic wreath of mine. 
Of accrued oak and needled pine, 

And lighter growths of forest lands. 
Woven and wound with careful pains, 
And tender thoughts and prayers, remains, 

As when it dropped from love's dear 
hands. 

And not unfitly garlanded. 

Is he, who, country-born and bred. 

Welcomes the sylvan ring which gives 
A feeling of old summer days, 
The wild delight of woodland ways, 

The glory of the autumn leaves. 

And, if the flowery meed of song 
To other bards may well belong, 

Be his, who from the farm-field spoke 
A word for Freedom when her need 
Was not of dulcimer and reed. 

This Isthmian wreath of pine and oak. 



476 



AT SUNDOWN 



THE WIND OF MARCH 

Up from the sea the wild north wind is 
blowing 
Under the sky's gxay arch ; 
Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, 
knowing 
It is the wind of March. 

Between the passing and the coming season, 

This stormy interlude 
Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason 

For trustful gratitude. 

Welcome to waiting ears its harsh fore- 
warning 
Of light and warmth to come, 
The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter 
morning. 
The earth arisen in bloom ! 

In the loud tumult winter's strength is 
breaking ; 

I listen to the sound, 
As to a voice of resurrection, waking 

To life the dead, cold ground. 

Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I 
hearken 
Of rivulets on their way ; 
I see these tossed and naked tree-tops 
darken 
With the fresh leaves of May. 

This roar of storm, this sky so gray and 
lowering 

Invite the airs of Spring, 
A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering. 

The bluebird's song and wing. 

Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes 
follow 
This northern hurricane, 
And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swal- 
low 
Shall visit us again. 

And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed 
pasture 
And by the whispering rills, 
Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Mas- 
ter, 
Taught on his Syrian hills. 



Blow, then, wild wind ! thy roar shall end 
in singing, 
Thy chill in blossoming ; 
Come, like Bethesda's troubling angelf 
bringing 
The healing of the Spring. 



BETWEEN THE GATES 

Between the gates of birth and death 
An old and saintly pilgrim passed, 

With look of one who witnesseth 
The long-sought goal at last. 

"0 thou whose reverent feet have found 
The Master's footprints in thy way 

And walked thereon as holy ground, 
A boon of thee I pray. 

" My lack would borrow thy excess, 
My feeble faith the strength of thine ; 

I need thy soul's white saintliness 
To hide the stains of mine. 

" The grace and favor else denied 
May well be granted for thy sake." 

So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried, 
A younger pilgrim spake. 

" Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift j 
No power is mine," the sage replied, 

" The burden of a soul to lift 
Or stain of sin to hide. 

" Howe'er the outward life may seem. 
For pardoning grace we all must pray ; 

No man his brother can redeem 
Or a soul's ransom pay. 

" Not always age is growth of good ; 

Its years have losses with their gain ; 
Against some evil youth withstood 

Weak hands may strive in vain, 

" With deeper voice than any speech 
Of mortal lips from man to man. 

What earth's unwisdom may not teach 
The Spirit only can. 

" Make thou that holy guide thine own, 
And following where it leads the way, 

The known shall lapse in the unknown 
As twilight into day. 



TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



477 



« The best of earth shall still remain, 
And heaven's eternal years shall prove 

That life and death, and joy and pain, 
Are ministers of Love." 



THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER 

Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines 
Through yon columnar pines. 

And on the deepening shadows of the 
lawn 
Its golden lines are drawn. 

Dreaming of long gone summer days like 
this. 

Feeling the wind's soft kiss, 
Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight 

Have still their old delight, 

I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet 
day 

Lapse tenderly away ; 
And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast, 

I ask, " Is this the last ? 

** Will nevermore for me the seasons run 
Their round, and will the sun 

Of ardent sumniers yet to come forget 
For me to rise and set ? " 

Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with 
thee 
Wherever thou mayst be. 
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of 
speech 
Each answering unto each. 

For this still hour, this sense of mystery 
far 

Beyond the evening star. 
No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll : 

The soul would fain with soul 

Wait, while these few swift-passing days 
fulfil ^ F S ^ 

The wise-disposing Will, 
And, in the evening as at morning, trust 

The All-Merciful and Just. 

The solemn joy that soul-communion feels 

Immortal life reveals ; 
And human love, its prophecy and sign. 

Interprets love divine. 



Come then, in thought, if that alone may be, 
O friend ! and bring with thee 

Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres 
And the Eternal Years ! 



TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

8th Mo. 29TH, 1892 

[This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was 
written but a few weeks before his death.] 

Among the thousands who with hail and 
cheer 

Will welcome thy new j'ear, 
How few of all have passed, as thou and I, 

So many milestones by ! 

We have grown old together ; we have 
seen. 

Our youth and age between. 
Two generations leave us, and to-day 

We with the third hold way, 

Loving and loved. If thought must back- 
ward run 

To those who, one by one. 
In the great silence and the dark beyond 

Vanished with farewells fond, 

Unseen, not lost ; our grateful memories 
still 
Their vacant places fill, 
And with the full-voiced greeting of new 
friends 
A tenderer whisper blends. 

Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood 

Of mingled ill and good. 
Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame, 

For pity more than blame, — 

The gift is thine the weary world to make 

More cheerful for thy sake, 
Soothing the ears its Miserere pains, 

With the old Hellenic strains, 

Lighting the sullen face of discontent 
With smiles for blessing sent. 

Enough of selfish wailing has been had, 
Thank God ! for notes more glad. 

Life is indeed no holiday ; therein 
Are want, and woe, and sin. 



478 



AT SUNDOWN 



Death and its nameless fears, and over all 


Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with 


Our pitying tears must fall. 


spring. 




The evening thrushes sing. 


Sorrow is real ; but the counterfeit 




Which folly brings to it, 


The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and 


We need thy wit and wisdom to resist, 


late, 


rarest Optimist ! 


When at the Eternal Gate 




We leave the words and works we call our 


Thy hand, old friend ! the service of our 


own. 


days. 


And lift void hands alone 


In differing moods and ways 




May prove to those who follow in our train 


For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul 


Not valueless nor vain. 


Brings to that Gate no toll ; 




Giftless we come to Him, who all things 


Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream, 


gives, 


The songs of boyhood seem, 


And live because He lives. 



POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER 



Originally published in the volume entitled 
Hazel Blossoms, and accompanied by the fol- 
lowing prefatory note : — 

I have ventured, in compliance with the 
desire of dear friends of my beloved sister, 
Elizabeth H. Whittier, to add to this little 
volume the few poetical pieces which she left 
behind her. . . . These poems, with perhaps 
two or three exceptions, afford but slight indi- 
cations of the inward life of the writer, who 
had an almost morbid dread of spiritual and 
intellectual egotism, or of her tenderness of 
sympathy, ehiistened niirthfulness, and pleas- 
ant play of thought and fancy, when her shy, 
beautiful soul opened like a flower in the 
warmth of social communion. In the lines on 



Dr. Kane her friends will see something of her 
fine individuality, — the rare mingling of deli- 
cacy and intensity of feeling which made her 
dear to them. This little poem reached Cuba 
while the great explorer lay on his death-bed, 
and we are told that he listened with grateful 
tears while it was read to him by his mother. 

I am tempted to say more, but I write as 
under the eye of her who, while with us, shrank 
with painful deprecation from the praise or 
mention of performances which seemed so far 
below her ideal of excellence. To those who 
best knew her, the beloved circle of her inti- 
mate friends, I dedicate this slight memorial. 
J. G. W. 

Amesbuky, 9th mo., 1874. 



THE DREAM OF ARGYLE 

Earthly arms no more uphold him 
On his prison's stony floor ; 

Waiting death in his last slumber, 
Lies the doomed MacCallum More. 

And he dreams a dream of boyhood ; 

Rise again his heathery hills, 
Sound again the hound's long baying, 

Cry of moor-fowl, laugh of rills. 

Now he stands amidst his clansmen 
In the low, long banquet-hall. 

Over grim ancestral armor 
Sees the ruddy firelight fall. 

Once again, with pulses beating. 
Hears the wandering minstrel tell 

How Montrose on Inverary 

Thief-like from his mountains fell. 

Down the glen, beyond the castle. 
Where the linn's swift waters shine, 

Round the youthful heir of Argyle 
Shy feet glide and white arms twine. 

Fairest of the rustic dancers, 

Blue-eyed £ftie smiles once more, 



Bends to him her snooded tresses. 
Treads with him the grassy floor. 

Now he hears the pipes lamenting, 
Harpers for his mother mourn. 

Slow, with sable plume and pennon, 
To her cairn of burial borne. 

Then anon bis dreams are darker. 
Sounds of battle fill his ears, 

And the pibroch's mournful wailing 
For his father's fall he hears. 

Wild Lochaber's mountain echoes 
Wail in concert for the dead. 

And Loch Awe's deep waters murmur 
For the Campbell's glory fled ! 

Fierce and strong the godless tyrants 

Trample the apostate land, 
While her poor and faithful remnant 

Wait for the Avenger's hand. 

Once again at Inverary, 

Years of weary exile o'er. 
Armed to lead his scattered clansmen. 

Stands the bold MacCallum More. 

Once again to battle calling 

Sound the war-pipes through the glen 



48o 



POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER 



And the court-yard of Dunstaffnage 
Rings with tread of armed men. 

All is lost ! The godless triumph, 
And the faitlifnl ones and true 

From the scaffold and the prison 
Covenant with God anew. 

On the darkness of his dreaming 
Great and sudden glory shone ; 

Over bonds and death victorious 
Stands he by the Father's throne ! 

From the radiant ranks of martyrs 
Notes of joy and praise he hears, 

Songs of his poor land's deliverance 
Sounding from the future years. 

Lo, he wakes ! but airs celestial 
Bathe him in immortal rest, 

And he sees with unsealed vision 
Scotland's cause with victory blest. 

Shining hosts attend and guard him 
As he leaves his prison door ; 

And to death as to a triumph 
Walks the great MacCallum More ! 



LINES 

Written on the departure of Joseph Sturge, 
after his visit to the abolitionists of the United 
States, 

Fair islands of the sunny sea ! midst all 

rejoicing things, 
No more the wailing of the slave a wild 

discordance brings ; 
On the lifted brows of freemen the tropic 

breezes blow. 
The mildew of the bondman's toil the land 

no more shall know. 

How swells from those green islands, 

where bird and leaf and flower 
Are praising in their own sweet way the 

dawn of freedom's hour. 
The glorious resurrection song from hearts 

rejoicing poured, 
Thanksgiving for the priceless gift, — man's 

regal crown restored 1 

How beautiful through all the green and 
tranquil summer land, 



Uplifted, as by miracle, the solemn churches 
stand ! 

The grass is trodden from the paths where 
waiting freemen throng, 

Athirst and fainting for the cup of life de- 
nied so long. 

Oh, blessed were the feet of him whose 

generous errand here 
Was to unloose the captive's chain and dry 

the mourner's tear ; 
To lift again the fallen ones a brother's 

robber hand 
Had left in pain and wretchedness by the 

waysides of the land. 

The islands of the sea rejoice ; the harvest 
anthems rise ; 

The sower of the seed must own 't is mar- 
vellous in his eyes ; 

The old waste places are rebuilt, — the 
broken walls restored, — 

And the wilderness is blooming like the 
garden of the Lord ! 

Thanksgiving for the holy fruit ! should 

not the laborer rest. 
His earnest faith and works of love have 

been so richly blest ? 
The pride of all fair England shall her 

ocean islands be. 
And their peasantry with joyful hearts 

keep ceaseless jubilee. 

Rest, never ! while his countrymen have 

trampled hearts to bleed. 
The stifled murmur of their wrongs his 

listening ear shall heed, 
Where England's far dependencies her 

might, not mercy, know, 
To aU the crushed and suffering there his 

pitying love shall flow. 

The friend of freedom everywhere, how 

mourns he for our land. 
The brand of whose hypocrisy burns on 

her guilty hand ! 
Her thrift a theft, the robber's greed and 

cunning in her eye. 
Her glory shame, her flaunting flag on all 

the winds a lie ! 

For us with steady strength of heart and 
zeal forever true, 



DR. KANE IN CUBA 



481 



The champion of the island slave the con- 
flict doth renew, 

His labor here hath been to point the 
Pharisaic eye 

Away from empty creed and form to where 
the wounded lie. 

How beautiful to us should seem the com- 
ing feet of such ! 

Their garments of self-sacrifice have heal- 
ing in their touch ; 

Their gospel mission none may doubt, for 
they heed the Master's call, 

Who here walked with the multitude, and 
sat at meat with all ! 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 

He rests with the immortals ; his journey 

has been long : 
For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full 

and strong ! 
So well and bravely has he done the work 

he found to do, 
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man 

forever true. 

Strong to the end, a man of men, from out 

the strife he passed ; 
The grandest hour of all his life was that 

of earth the last. 
Now midst his snowy hills of home to the 

grave they bear him down, 
The glory of his fourscore years resting on 

him like a crown. 

The mourning of the many bells, the 
drooping flags, all seem 

Like some dim, unreal pageant passing on- 
ward in a dream ; 

And following with the living to his last 
and narrow bed, 

Methinks I see a shadowy band, a train of 
noble dead. 

'T is a strange and weird procession that is 
slowly moving on. 

The phantom patriots gathered to the fu- 
neral of their son ! 

In shadowy guise they move along, brave 
Otis with hushed tread. 

And Warren walking reverently by the 
father of the dead. 



Gliding foremost in the misty band a gentle 
form is there, 

In the white robes of the angels and their 
glory round her hair. 

She hovers near and bends above her world- 
wide honored child, 

And the joy that heaven alone can know 
beams on her features mild. 

And so they bear him to his grave in the 

fulness of his years. 
True sage and prophet, leaving us in a time 

of many fears. 
Nevermore amid the darkness of our wild 

and evil day 
Shall his voice be heard to cheer us, shall 

his finger point the way. 



DR. KANE IN CUBA 

A NOBLE life is in thy care, 

A sacred trust to thee is given ; 

Bright Island ! let thy healing air 
Be to him as the breath of Heavea 

The marvel of his daring life — 
The self-forgetting leader bold — 

Stirs, like the trumpet's call to strife, 
A million hearts of meaner mould. 

Eyes that shall never meet his own 
Look dim with tears across the sea, 

Where from the dark and icy zone. 

Sweet Isle of Flowers ! he comes to thea 

Fold him in rest, O pitying clime ! 

Give back his wasted strength again ; 
Soothe, with thy endless summer time. 

His winter-wearied heart and brain. 

Sing soft and low, thou tropic bird. 

From out the fragrant, flowery tree, — 

The ear that hears thee now has heard 
The ice-break of the winter sea. 

Through his long watch of awful night, 
He saw the Bear in Northern skies ; 

Now, to the Southern Cross of light 
He lifts in hope his weary eyes. 

Prayers from the hearts that watched in fear 
When the dark North no answer gave, 

Rise, trembling, to the Father's ear, 
That still His love may help and save. 



482 



rOEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER 





The roused sea is lashing 


LADY FRANKLIN 


The bold shore behind. 




And the moan of its ebbing 


Fold thy hands, thy work is over ; 


Keeps time with the wind. 


Cool thy watching eyes with tears ; 




Let thy poor heart, over-wearied. 


On, on through the darkness, 
A spectre, I pass 


Rest alike from hopes and fears, — 




Where, like moaning of broken hearts, 


Hopes, that saw with sleepless vision 


Surges the grass ! 


One sad picture f.ading slow ; 




Fears, that followed, vague and nameless, 


I see her lone head-stone, — 


Lifting back the veils of snow. 


'T is white as a shroud ; 




Like a pall hangs above it 


For thy brave one, for thy lost one, 


The low drooping cloud. 


Truest heart of woman, weep ! 




Owning still the love that granted 


Who speaks through the dark night 


Unto thy beloved sleep. 


And lull of the wind ? 




'T is the sound of the pine-leaves 


Not for him that hour of terror 


And sea-waves behind. 


When, the long ice-battle o'er, 




In the sunless day his comrades 


The dead girl is silent, — 


Deathward trod the Polar shore. 


I stand by her now ; 




And her pulse beats no quicker, 


Spared the cruel cold and famine. 


Nor crimsons her brow. 


Spared the fainting heart's despair, 




What but that could mercy grant him ? 


The small hand that trembled, 


What but that has been thy prayer ? 


When last in my own. 




Lies patient and folded. 


Dear to thee that last memorial 


And colder than stone. 


From the cairn beside the sea ; 




Evermore the month of roses 


Like the white blossoms falling 


Shall be sacred time to thee. 


To-night in the gale. 




So she in her beauty 


Sad it is the mournful yew-tree 


Sank mournful and pale. 


O'er his slumbers may not wave ; 
Sad it is the English daisy 




Yet I loved her ! I utter 


May not blossom on his grave. 


Such words by her grave, 




As I would not have spoken 


But his tomb shall storm and winter 


Her last breath to save. 


Shape and fashion year by year, 




Pile his mighty mausoleum. 


Of her love the angels 


Block by block, and tier on tier. 


In heaven might tell, 




While mine would be whispered 


Guardian of its gleaming portal 


With shudders in hell ! 


Shall his stainless honor be. 




While thy love, a sweet immortal, 


'T was well that the white ones 


Hovers o'er the winter sea. 


Who bore her to bliss 




Shut out from her new life 


NIGHT AND DEATH 


The vision of this ; 


The storm-wind is howling 


Else, sure as I stand here, 


Through old pines afar ; 


And speak of my love. 


The drear night is falling 


She would leave for my darkness 


Without moon or star. 


Her glory above. 



CHARITY 



483 



THE MEETING WATERS 

Close beside the meeting waters, 
Long I stood as in a dream, 

Watching how the little river 
Fell into the broader stream. 

Calm and still the mingled current 

Glided to the waiting sea ; 
On its breast serenely pictured 

Floating cloud and skirting tree. 

And I thought, " O human spirit ! 

Strong and deep and pure and blest. 
Let the stream of my existence 

Blend with thine, and find its rest ! " 

I could die as dies the river. 
In that current deep and wide ; 

I would live as live its waters. 
Flashing from a stronger tide ! 



THE WEDDING VEIL 

Dear Anna, when I brought her veil. 
Her white veil, on her wedding night, 

Threw o'er my thin brown hair its folds. 
And, laughing, turned me to the light. 

" See, Bessie, see ! you wear at last 
The bridal veil, forsworn for years ! " 

She saw my face, — her laugh was hushed, 
Her happy eyes were filled with tears. 

With kindly haste and trembling hand 
She drew away the gauzy mist ; 

•* Forgive, dear heart ! " her sweet voice 
said : 
Her loving lips my forehead kissed. 



We passed from out the searching light ; 

The summer night was calm and fair : 
I did not see her pitying eyes, 

I felt her soft hand smooth my hair. 

Her tender love unlocked my heart ; 
Mid falling tears, at last I said, 
" Forsworn indeed to me that veil 
Because I only love the dead ! " 

She stood one moment statue-still, 
And, musing, spake, in undertone, 
" The living love may colder grow ; 
The dead is safe with God alone ! " 



CHARITY 

The pilgrim and stranger who through the 

day 
Holds over the desert his trackless way, 
Where the terrible sands no shade have 

known. 
No sound of life save his camel's moan. 
Hears, at last, through the mercy of Allah 

to all. 
From his tent-door at evening the Bedouin's 

call: 
" Whoever thou art whose need is great, 
In the name of God, the Compassionate 
And Merciful One, for thee I wail ! " 

For gifts in His name of food and rest 
The tents of Islam of God are blest ; 
Thou who hast faith in the Christ above. 
Shall the Koran teach thee the Law of 

Love ? — 
O Christian ! open thy heart and door. 
Cry east and west to the wandering poor : 
" Whoever thou art whose need is great, 
In the name of Christ, the Compassionate 
And Merciful One, for thee I wait I " 



APPENDIX 



L EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED 

VERSES 

I AM yielding to what seems, under the cir- 
cumstances, almost a necessity, in adding to the 
pieces assigned for one reason or another to the 
limbo of an appendix, some of my very earliest 
attempts at verse, which have been kept alive 
in the newspapers for the last half century. 
A few of them have even been printed in book 
form without my consent, and greatly to my 
annoyance, with all their accumulated errors 
of the press added to their original defects 
and crudity. I suppose they should have died 
a natural death long ago, but their feline te- 
nacity of life seems to contradict the theory 
of the " survival of the fittest." I have con- 
sented, at my publishers' request, to take the 
poor vagrants home and give them a more 
presentable appearance, in the hope that they 
may at least be of some interest to those who 
are curious enough to note the weak begin- 
nings of the graduate of a small country dis- 
trict school, sixty years ago. That they met 
■with some degree of favor at that time may be 
accounted for by the fact that the makers of 
verse were then few in number, with little 
competition in their unprofitable vocation, and 
that the standard of criticism was not discour- 
agingly high. 

The earliest of the author's verses that 
found their way into print were published in 
the Newburyport Free Press, edited by Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison, in 1826. [The poems 
here collected, with the exception of the last, 
•were written during the years 1825-1833.] 

THE EXILE'S DEPARTURE 

Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful ex- 
istence. 
With feelings of sorrow I bid ye adieu — 
A lasting adieu ! for now, dim in the distance. 

The shores of Hibernia recede from my view. 
Farewell to the cliffs, tempest-beaten and gray. 
Which guard the lov'd shores of my own na- 
tive land ; 
Farewell to the village and sail-shadow'd bay, 
The forest-crown'd hill and the water-wash'd 
strand. 



484 



I've fought for my country — I've brav'd all 
the dangers 
That throng round the path of the warrior in 
strife ; 
I now must depart to a nation of strangers, 

And pass in seclusion the remnant of life ; 
Far, far from the friends to my bosom most 
dear, 
With none to support me in peril and pain, 
And none but the stranger to drop the sad tear 
On the grave where the heart-broken Exile is 
lain. 

Friends of my youth 1 I must leave you for- 
ever. 
And hasten to dwell in a region unknown : — 
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad ocean 
sever, 
Hearts firmly united and tried as our own. 
Ah, no ! though I wander, all sad and forlorn, 

In a far distant land, yet shall memory trace, 
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I'm 
borne. 
The scene of past pleasures, — my own native 
place. 

Farewell, shores of Erin, green land of my fa- 
thers : — 
Once more, and forever, a mournful adieu ! 
For round thy dim headlands the ocean-mist 
gathers. 
And shrouds the fair isle I no longer can view. 
I go — but wherever my footsteps I bend. 

For freedom and peace to my own native isle. 
And contentment and joy to each warm-hearted 
friend 
Shall be the heart's prayer of the lonely 
Exile I 



THE DEITY 

Thk Prophet stood 
On the high mount, and saw the tempest cloud 
Pour the fierce whirlwind from its reservoir 
Of congregated gloom. The mountain oak. 
Torn from the earth, heaved high its roots 

where once 
Its branches waved. The fir-tree's shapely 

form, 
Smote by the tempest, lashed the mountain's 

sid.e. 
Yet, calm in conscious purity, the Seer 
Beheld the awful desolation, for 
The Eternal Spirit moved not in the storm. 



EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES 



485 



The tempest ceased. The cavemed earthquake 

burst 
Forth from its prison, and the mountain rocked 
Even to its base. The topmost crags were 

thrown, 
With fearful crashing, down its shuddering 

sides. 
Unawed, the Prophet saw and heard ; he felt 
Not in the earthquake moved the God of 

Heaven. 
The mummr died away ; and from the height. 
Torn by the storm and shattered by the shock, 
Rose far and clear a p5Tamid of flame 
Mighty and vast ; the startled mountain deer 
Shrank from its glare, and cowered within the 

shade ; 
The wild fowl shrieked — but even then the 

Seer 
Untrembling stood and marked the fearful 

glow, 
For Israel's God came not within the flame ! 

The fiery beacon sank. A still, small voice, 
Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed 
Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart. 
Then bowed the holy man ; his face he veUed 
Within his mantle — and in meekness owned 
The presence of his God, discerned not in 
The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty 



THE VALE OF THE MERRIMAC 

There are streams which are famous in his- 
tory's story. 
Whose names are familiar to pen and to 
tongue. 
Renowned in the records of love and of glory. 
Where knighthood has ridden and minstrels 
have sung : — 
Fair streams thro' more populous regions are 
gliding, 
Tower, temple, and palace their borders 
adorning. 
With tall-masted ships on their broad bosoms 
riding. 
Their banners stretch'd out in the breezes of 
morning ; 
And their vales may be lovely and pleasant — 
but never 
Was skiff ever wafted, or wav'd a white sail 
O'er a lovelier wave than my dear native river. 
Or brighter tides roU'd than in Merrimac's 
vale ! 

And fair streams may glide where the climate 
is milder, 
AVhere winter ne'er gathers and spring ever 
blooms. 
And others may roll where the region is wilder. 
Their dark waters hid in some forest's deep 
gloom. 
Where the thunder-scath'd peaks of Helvetia 
are frowning, 
And the Rhine's rapid waters encircle their 



Where the snows of long years are the hoary 
Alps crowning. 
And the tempest-charg'd vapor their tall tops 
embraces : — 
There sure might be fix'd, amid scenery so 
frightful. 
The region of romance and wild fairy-tale, — 
But sucli scenes could not be to ^y heart so de- 
lightful 
As the home of my fathers, — fair Merrimac's 
vale! 

There are streams where the bounty of Provi- 
dence musters 
The fairest of fruits by their warm sunny 
sides. 
The vine bending low with the grape's heavy 
clusters, 
And the orange-tree waving its fruit o'er 
their tides : — 
But I envy not him whose lot has been cast 
there. 
For oppression is there — and the hand of the 
spoiler, 
Regardless of justice or mercy, has past there, 
And made him a wretched and indigent 
toiler. 
No — dearer to me are the scenes of my child- 
hood. 
The moss-cover'd bank and the breeze-wafted 
sail. 
The age-stinted oak and the green groves of 
wild-wood 
That wave round the borders of Merrimac's 
vale! 

Oh, lovely the scene, when the gray misty vapor 

Of morning is lifted from Merrimac's shore ; 
When the fire-fly, lighting his wild gleaming 
taper. 
Thy dimly seen lowlands comes glimmering 
o'er; 
When on thy calm surface the moonbeam falls 
brightly. 
And the dull bird of night is his covert for- 
saking. 
When the whippoorwill's notes from thy mar- 
gin sound lightly, 
And break on the sound which thy small 
waves are making, 
O brightest of visions ! my heart shall forever, 

Till memory shall perish and reason shall fail. 
Still preference give to my own native river. 
The home of my fathers, and Merrimac's 
vale! 



BENEVOLENCE 

Hail, heavenly gift ! within the Imman breast, 
Germ of unnnmber'd virtues — by thy aid 

The fainting heart, with riving grief opprest. 
Survives the ruin adverse scenes have made :' 

Woes that have wrung the bosom, cares that 
preyed 
Long on the spirit, are dissolv'd by thee — 

Misfortune's frown, despair's disastrous shadOy 



486 



APPENDIX 



Ghastly disease, and pining poverty, 
Thy influence dread, and at thy approach they 
flee. 

Thy spirit led th' immortal Howard on ; 

Nurtur'd by thee, on many a foreign shore 
Imperishable fame, by virtue won, 

Adorns his memory, tho' his course is o'er ; 
TW animating smile his aspect wore. 

To cheer the sorrow-desolated soul, 
Compassion's balm in grief -worn hearts to pour, 

And snatch the prisoner from despair's con- 
trol, 
Steal half his woes away, and lighter make the 
whole. 

Green be the sod on Cherson's honor'd field. 
Where wraps the turf around his mouldering 
clay; 

There let the earth her choicest beauties yield. 
And there the breeze in gentlest murmurs 

There let the widow and the orphan stray. 

To wet with tears their benefactor's tomb ; 
There let the rescued prisoner bend his way, 
And mourn o'er him, who in the dungeon's 
gloom 
Had sought him and averted misery's fearful 
doom. 

His grave perfum'd with heartfelt sighs of 
grief. 
And moistened by the tear of gratitude, — 
Oh, how unlike the spot where war's grim chief 
Sinks on the field, in sanguine waves im- 
brued ! 
Who mourns for him, whose footsteps can be 
viewed 
With reverential awe imprinted near 
The monument rear'd o'er the man of blood ? 

Or who waste on it sorrow's balmy tear ? 
None ! shame and misery rest alone upon his 
bier. 

Offsprinsr of heaven ! Benevolence, thy pow'r 

Bade Wilberforce its mighty champion be. 
And taught a Clarkson's ardent niind to soar 

O'er every obstacle, when serving thee : — 
Theirs was the task to set the sufferer free. 

To break the bonds which bound th' unwill- 
ing slave. 
To shed abroad the light of liberty. 

And leave to all the rights their Maker gave. 
To bid the world rejoice o'er hated slavery's 
grave. 

Diffuse thy charms, Benevolence ! let thy light 

Pierce the dark clouds which ages past have 
thrown 
Before the beams of truth — and nature's right, 

Inborn, let every hardened tyrant own ; 
On our fair shore be thy mild presence known ; 

And every portion of Columbia's land 
Be as God's garden with thy blessings sown ; 

Yea, o'er Earth's regions let thy love expand 
Till all united are in friendship's sacred band ! 



Then in that hour of joy will be fulfilled 

The prophet's heart-consoling prophecy ; 
Then war's commotion shall on earth be stilled, 

And men their swords to other use apply ; 
Then Afric's injured sons no more shall try 

The bitterness of slavery's toil and pain, 
Nor pride nor love of gain diiect the eye 

Of stern oppression to their homes again ; 
But peace, a lasting peace, throughout the 
world shall reign. 



OCEAN 

Unfathomed deep, unfetter'd waste 

Of never-silent waves, 
Each by its rushing follower chas'd, 

Through unillumin'd caves, ' 

And o'er the rocks whose turrets rude, 

E'en since the birth of time, 
Have heard amid thy solitude 

The billow's ceaseless chime. 

O'er what recesses, depths unknown, 

Dost thou thy waves impel. 
Where never yet a sunbeam shone, 

Or gleam of moonlight fell ? 
For never yet did mortal eyes I 

Thy gloom-wrapt deeps behold, 
And naught of thy dread mysteries 

The tongue of man hath told. 

What, though proud man presume to hold 

His course upon thy tide. 
O'er thy dark billows uncontroll'd 

His fragile bark to guide — 
Yet who, upon thy mountain waves, 

Can feel himself secure 
While sweeping o'er thy yawning caves, 

Deep, awful, and obscure ? 

But thou art niild and tranquil now — 

Thy wrathful spirits sleep, 
And gentle billows, calm and slow. 

Across thy bosom sweep. 
Yet where the dim horizon's bound 

Rests on thy sparkling bed. 
The tempest-cloud, in gloom profound. 

Prepares its wrath to shed. 

Tlius, mild and calm in youth's bright hour 

The tide of life appears. 
When fancy paints, with magic spell, 

The bliss of coming years ; 
But clouds will rise, and darkness bring 

O'er life's deceitful way, 
And cruel disappointment fling j 

Its shade on hope's dim ray. 



THE SICILIAN VESPERS 

SiLKNCE o'er sea and earth 
VVith the veil of evening fell. 

Till the convent-tower sent deeply forth 
The chime of its vesper bell. 



EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES 



487 



One moment — and that solemn somid 


Down from thy eternal throne. 


Fell heavy on the ear ; 


From thy land of cloud and storm, 


But a sterner echo passed around, 


Where the meeting icebergs groan, 


And the boldest shook to hear. 


Sweepeth on thy wrathful form. 


The startled monks throns^ed up, 


Spirit of the frozen wing ! 


In the torchlight cold and dim ; 


Dweller of a voiceless clime. 


And the priest let fall his incense-cup. 


Where no coming on of spring 


And the virgrin hushed her hymn, 


Gilds the weary course of time I 
Monarch of a reahn untrod 


For a boding clash, and a clanging tramp, 


And a summoning voice were heard. 


By the restless feet of men. 


And fretted wall, and dungeon damp. 


Where alone the hand of God 


To the fearful echo stirred. 


'Mid his mighty works hath been I 


The peasant heard the sound. 


Throned amid the ancient hills, 


As he sat beside his hearth ; 


Piled with undecaj-ing snow. 


And the song and the dance were hushed around. 


Flashing with the path of rills. 
Frozen in their first glad flow ; 


With the lire-side tale of mirth. 


The chieftain shook in his banner'd haU, 


Thou hast seen the gloomy north. 


As the sound of fear drew nigh, 


Gleaming with unearthly light. 


And the warder shrank from the castle wall. 


Spreading its pale banners forth. 


As the gleam of speai-s went by. 


Checkered with the stars of night. 


Woe ! woe ! to the stranger, then, 


Thou hast gazed untrembling, where 


At the feast and flow of wine. 


Giant forms of flame were driven, 


In the red array of mailed men, 


Like the spirits of the air, 


Or bowed at the holy shrine ; 


Striding up the vault of heaven ! 


For the wakened pride of an injured land 


Thou hast seen that midnight glow. 


Had burst its iron thrall. 


Hiding moon and star and sky, 


From the plumed chief to the pilgrim band ; 
Woe ! woe ! to tlie sons of Gaul 1 


And the icy hiUs below 


Reddening to the fearful dye. 


Proud beings fell that hour. 


Dark and desolate and lone, 


W^ith the young and passing fair. 


Curtained with the tempest-cloud, 


And the flame went up from dome and tower. 


Drawn around thy ancient throne 


The avenger's arm was there ! 


Like oblivion's moveless shroud, 


The stranger priest at the altar stood. 
And clasped his beads in prayer. 


Dim and distantly the sun 


Glances on thy palace walls. 


But the holy shrine grew dim with blood, 


But a shadow cold and dun 


The avenger found him there ! 


Broods along its pillared halls. 


Woe ! woe ! to the sons of Gaul, 


Lord of sunless depths and cold I 


To the serf and mailed lord ; 


Chainer of the northern sea ! ^ 


They were gathered darkly, one and all, 


At whose feet the storm is rolled. 


To the harvest of the sword : 


Who hath power to humble thee? 


And the morning sun, with a quiet smile. 


Spirit of the stormy north ! 


Shone out o'er hill and glen. 


Bow thee to thy "Maker's nod ; 


On ruined temple and smouldering pile. 


Bend to him who sent thee forth, 


And the ghastly forms of men. 


Servant of the living God. 


Ay, the sunshine sweetly smiled. 




As its early glance came forth. 
It had no sympathy with the wild 


THE EARTHQUAKE 


And terrible things of earth. 




And the man of blood that day might read. 


CALivrLY the night came down 


In a language freely given. 


O'er Scylla's shatter'd walls ; 


How ill his dark and midnight deed 


How desolate that silent town ! 


Became the eahn of Heaven. 


How tenantless the halls. 




Where yesterday her thousands trod. 




And princes graced their proud abode I 


THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH 


Low, on the wet sea sand, 




Humbled in anguish now. 


Spirit of the frozen North, 


The despot, midst his menial band. 
Bent down his kingly brow ; 


Where the wave is chained and still, 


And the savage bear looks forth 


And prince and peasant knelt in prayer. 


Nightly from his caverned hill I 


For grief had made them equal there. 



488 



APPENDIX 



Again as at the morn, 

The earthquake roll'd its car : 

Lowly the castle-towers were borne, 
That raock'd the storms of war ; 

The mountain reeled, its shiver'd brow 

Went down among the waves below. 

Up rose the kneelers then. 
As the wave's rush was heard : 

The horror of those fated men 
Was uttered by no word. 

But closer still the mother prest 

The infant to her faithful breast. 

One long, wild shriek went up, 

Full mighty in despair ; 
As bow'd to drink death's bitter cup. 

The thousands gathered there ; 
And man's strong wail and woman's cry 
Blent as the waters hurried by. 

On swept the whelming sea ; 

The mountains felt its shock, 
As the long cry of agony 

Thrills thro' their towers of rock ; 
An echo round that fatal shore 
The death wail of the sufferers bore. 

The morning sun shed forth 

Its light upon the scene, 
Where tower and palace strew'd the earth 

With wrecks of what had been. 
But of the thousands who were gone, 
No trace was left, no vestige shown. 

JUDITH AT THE TENT OF HOLO- 
FERNES 

Night was down among the mountains. 

In her dim and quiet manner. 
Where Bethulia's silver fountains 

Gushed beneatli the Assyrian banner. 
Moonlight, o'er her meek dominion. 

As a mighty flag unfurled. 
Like an angel's snowy pinion 

Resting on a darkened world I 

Faintly rose the city's murmur, 

But the crowded camp was calm ; 
Girded in their battle armor, 

Each a falchion at his arm. 
Lordly chief and weary vassal 

In the arms of slumber fell ; 
It had been a day of wassail, 

And the wine had circled well. 

Underneath his proud pavilion 

Lay Assyria's champion. 
Where the ruby's rich vermilion 

Shone beside the beryl-stone. 
With imperial purple laden. 

Breathing in the perfumed air. 
Dreams he of the Jewish maiden. 

With her dark and jewelled hair. 

Who is she, the pale-browed stranger. 
Bending o'er that son of slaughter ? 



God be with thee in thy danger, 
Israel's lone and peerless daughter 1 

She hath bared her queenly beauty 
To the dark Assyrian's glance ; 

Now a high and sterner duty 
Bids her to his couch advance. 

Beautiful and pale she bendeth 

In her earnest prayer to Heaven ; 
Look again, that maiden standeth 

In the strength her God has given I 
Strangely is her dark eye kindled, 

Hot blood through her cheek is poured j 
Lo, her every fear hath dwindled. 

And her hand is on the sword I 

Upward to the flashing curtain. 

See, that mighty blade is driven. 
And its fall ! — 't is swift and certain 

As the cloud-fire's track in heaven I 
Down, as with a power supernal, 

Twice the lifted weapon fell ; 
Twice, his slumber is eternal — 

Who shall wake the infidel ? 

Sunlight on the mountains streameth 

Like an air-borne wave of gold ; 
And Bethulia's armor gleameth 

Round Judea's banner-fold. 
Down they go, the mailed warriors, 

As the upper torrents sally 
Headlong from their mountain-barriers 

Down upon the sleeping valley. 

Rouse thee from thy couch, Assyrian ! 

Dream no more of woman's smile ; 
Fiercer than the leaguered Tyrian, 

Or the dark -browed sons of Nile, 
Foes are on thy slumber breaking. 

Chieftain, to thy battle rise ! 
Vain the call — he will not waken — ■ 

Headless on his couch he lies. 

Who hath dimmed your boasted glory ? 

What hath woman's weakness done ? 
Whose dark brow is vip before ye. 

Blackening in the fierce-haired sun ? 
Lo ! an eye that never slumbers 

Looketh in its vengeance down ; 
And the thronged and mailed numbers 

Wither at Jehovah's frown ! 



METACOM 

Metacom, or Philip, the chief of the Wara- 
panoags, was the most powerful and sagacious 
Sachem who ever made war upon the English. 

Red as the banner which enshrouds 

The warrioj^dead, when strife is done, 
A broken mass of crimson clouds 

Hung over the departed sun. 
The shadow of the western hill 
Crept swiftly down, and darkly still. 
As if a sullen wave of night 
Were rushing on the pale twilight ; 



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489 



The forest-openiiifTS grew more dim, 
As glimpses of the arching bhie 
And waking stars came softly through 
The rifts of many a giant limb. 
Above the wet and tangled swamp 
White vapors gathered thick and damp, 
And through their cloudy curtaining 
Flapped many a brown and dusky wing — 
Pinions that fan the moonless dun, 
But fold them at the rising sun ! 

Beneath the closing veil of night. 

And leafy bough and curling fog, 
With his few warriors ranged in sight — 
Scarred relies of his latest light — 

Rested the fiery Wampanoag. 
He leaned upon his loaded gun, 
Warm with its recent work of death. 
And, save the struggling of his breath. 
That, slow and hard and long-repressed, 
Shook the damp folds around his breast, 
An eye that was unused to scan 
The sterner moods of that dark man 
Had deemed his tall and silent form 
With hidden passion fierce and warm, 
With that fixed eye, as still and dark 
As clouds which veil their lightning spark, 
That of some forest-champion, 
Whom sudden death had passed upon — 
A giant frozen into stone ! 
Son of the tlironed ISachem ! — Thou, 
The sternest of the forest kings, — 
Shall the scorned pale-one trample now, 
Unarabushed on thy mountain's brow, 
Yea, drive his vile and hated plough 

Among thy nation's holy things. 
Crushing the warrior-skeleton 
In scorn beneath his armed heel. 
And not a hand be left to deal 
A kindred vengeance fiercely back. 
And cross in blood the Spoiler's track ? 

He turned him to his trustiest one. 
The old and war-tried Annawon — 
" Brother ! " — The favored warrior stood 

In hushed and listening attitude — 
" This night the Vision-Spirit hath 

Unrolled the scroll of fate before me ; 
And ere the sunrise cometh, Death 

Will wave his dusky pinion o'er me ! 
Nay, start not — well I know thy faith — 
Thy weapon now may keep its sheath ; 
But, when the bodeful morning breaks. 
And the green forest widely wakes 

Unto the roar of English thunder. 
Then trusted brother, be it thine 
To burst upiiu the foeman's line, 
And rend liis serried strength asunder. 
Perchance' thyself and yet a few 
Of faithful ones may struggle through. 
And, rallying on the wooded plain. 
Strike deep for vengeance once again, 
And offer up in pale-face blood 
An offering to the Indian's God." 

A mnsket shot — a sharp, quick yell — 
And then the stifled groan of pain, 



Told that another red man fell, — 
And blazed a sudden light again 
Across that kingly brow and eye. 
Like lightning on a clouded sky, — 
And a low growl, like that which thrills 
The hunter of the Eastern hills, 

Burst through clenched teeth and rigid lip — 
And, when the great chief spoke again 
His deep voice shook beneath its rein, 
As wrath and grief held fellowship. 

" Brother ! methought when as but now 

I pondered on my nation's wrong. 
With sadness on his shadowy brow 

My father's spirit passed along ! 
He pointed to the far south-west, 

Where sunset's gold was growing dim, 

And seemed to beckon me to him, 
And to the forests of the blest ! — 
My father loved the white men, when 
They were but children, shelterless, 
For his great spirit at distress 
Melted to woman's tenderness — 
Nor was it given him to know 

That children whom he cherished then 

Would rise at length, like armed men, 
To work his people's overthrow. 
Yet thus it is ; — the God before 

Whose awful shrine the pale ones bow 
Hath frowned upon, and given o'er 

The red man to the stranger now ! 
A few more moons, and there wiU be 
No gathering to the council tree ; 
The scorched earth — the blackened log — 

The naked bones of warriors slain. 

Be the sole relics which remain 
Of the once mighty Wampanoag ! 
The forests of our hunting-land. 

With all their old and solemn green, 
Will bow before the Spoiler's axe — 
The plough displace the hunter's tracks, 
And the tall prayer-house steeple stand 

Where the Great Spirit's shrine hath been! 

' Yet, brother, from this awful hour 

The dying curse of Metacom 
Shall linger with abiding power 

Upon the spoilers of my home. 

The fearful veil of things to come. 

By Kitehtan's hand is lifted from 
The shadows of the embryo years ; 

And I can see more clearly through 
Than ever visioned Powwaw did. 
For all the future comes unbid 

Yet welcome to my tranced view, 
As battle-yell to warrior-ears ! 
From stream and lake and hunting-hill 

Our tribes may vanish like a dreara. 

And even my dark curse may seem 
Like idle winds when Heaven is still. 

No bodeful harbinger of ill ; 
But, fiercer than the dowmight thunder, 
When yawns the mountain-rock asunder, 
And riven pine and knotted oak 
Are reeling to the fearful stroke, 

That curse shall work its master's wiU ! 
The bed of yon blue mountain stream 



49° 



APPENDIX 



Shall pour a darker tide than rain — 
The sea shall catch its blood-red stain, 
And broadly on its banks shall gleam 

The steel of those who should be brothers ; 
Yea, those whom one fond parent nursed 
Shall meet in strife, like fiends accursed. 
And trample down the once loved form, 
While yet with breathing passion warm. 

As fiercely as they would another's ! '' 

The morning star sat dimly on 
The lighted eastern horizon — 
The deadly glare of levelled gun 

Came streaking through the twilight haze 

And naked to its reddest blaze, 
A hundred warriors sprang in view ; 

One dark red arm was tossed on high, 
One giant shout came hoai-sely through 

The clangor and the charging cry. 
Just as across the scattering gloom. 
Red as the naked hand of Doom, 

The English volley hurtled by — 
The arm — the voice of Metacom ! — 

One piercing shriek — one vengeful yell, 
Sent like an arrow to the sky. 

Told when the hunter-monarch fell ! 



MOUNT AGIOCHOOK 

The Indians supposed the White Mountains 
were the residence of powerful spirits, and in 
consequence rarely ascended them. 

Gray searcher of the upper air, 

There 's sunshine on thy ancient walls, 
A crown upon thy forehead bare, 

A flash upon thy waterfalls, 
A rainbow gloiy in the cloud 

Upon thine awful summit bowed, 
The radiant ghost of a dead storm ! 

And music from the leafy shroud 
Which swathes in green thy giant form, 

Mellowed and softened from above 
Steals downward to the ld\vland ear, 

SAveet as the first, fond dream of love 
That melts upon the maiden's ear. 

The time has been, white giant, when 

Thy shadows veiled the red man's home, 
And over crag and serpent den. 
And wild gorge where the steps of men 

In chase or battle might not come. 
The mountain eagle bore on high 

The emblem of the free of soul. 
And, midway in the fearful sky. 
Sent back the Indian battle ci'y, 

And answered to the thunder's roll. 

The wigwam fires have all burned out, 
The moccasin has left no track ; 

Nor wolf nor panther roani about 
The Saco and the Merrimac. 

And thou, that liftest up on high 

Thy mighty barri(;rs to the sky, 
Art not the haunted mount of old. 

Where on each crag of blasted stone 



Some dreadful spirit found his throne. 
And hid within the thick cloud fold. 
Heard only in the thunder's crash. 
Seen only in the lightning's Hash, 
When crumbled rock and riven branch 
Went down before the avalanche ! 

No more that spirit moveth there ; 

The dwellers of the vale are dead ; 
No hunter's arrow cleaves the air ; 

No dry leaf rustles to his tread. 
The pale-face climbs thy tallest rock. 
His hands thy crystal gates unlock ; 
From steep to steep his maidens call, 
Light laughing, like the streams that fall 
In music down thy rocky wall, 
And only when their careless tread 
Lays bare an Indian arrow-head. 
Spent and forgetful of the deer, 
Think of the race that perished here. 

Oh, sacred to the Indian seer, 

Gray altar of the men of old ! 
Not vainly to the listening ear 

The legends of thy past are told, — 
Tales of the downward sweeping flood, 
When bowed like reeds thj' ancient wood j 
Of armed hands, and spectral forms ; 
Of giants in their leafy shroud. 
And voices calling long and loud 
In the dread pauses of thy storms. 
For still within their caverned home 
Dwell the strange gods of heathendom I 



THE DRUNKARD TO HIS BOTTLE 

I was thinking of the temperance lyrics the 
great poet of Scotland might have written had 
he put his name to a pledge of abstinence, a 
thing unhappily unknown in his day. The 
result of my cogitation was this poor imitation 
of his dialect. 

Hoot ! — daur ye shaw ye're face again, 
Ye auld black thief o' purse an' brain ? 
For foul disgrace, for dool an' pain 

An' shame I ban ye : 
Wae 's me, that e'er my lips have ta'en 

Your kiss uncanny ! 

Nae mair, auld knave, without a shillin' 

To keep a starvin' wight frae stealin' 

Ye '11 sen' me hameward, blin' and reelin', 

Frae nightly swagger. 
By wall an' post my pathway feelin', 

Wi' mony a stagger. 

Nae mair o' fights that bruise an' mangle, 
Nae mair o' nets my feet to tangle, 
Nae mair o' senseless brawl an' wrangle, 

Wi' frien' an' wife too, 
Nae mair o' deavin' din an' jangle 

My feckless life through. 

I Ye thievin', cheatin' auld Cheap Jack, 
Peddlin' your poison brose, 1 crack i 



EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES 



491 



Sfour banes against my ingle-back 

\Vi' nieikle pleasure. 
Deil mend ye i' his workshop black, 

E'en at his leisiue ! 

I '11 brak ye're neck, ye foul auld sinner, 
I '11 spill ye're bluid, ye vile bef^inner 
O' a' the ills an' aches that winua 

Quat saul an' body ! 
Gie me hale breeks an' weel-spread dinner ■ 

Deil tak' ye'i-e toddy ! 

Nae mair wi' witches' broo gane gyte, 
Gie me ance mair the auld delight 
O' sittin' wi' my bairns in sight, 

The gude wife near, 
The weel-spent day, the peacefu' night, 

The moruin' cheer ! 

Cock a' ye're heids, my bairns fu' gleg, 
My winsome Robin, Jean, an' Meg, 
For food and claes ye shall na beg 

A doited daddie. 
Dance, auld wife, on your girl-day leg. 

Ye 've foun' your laddie ! 



THE FAIR QUAKERESS 

She was a fair young girl, yet on her brow 
No pale pearl shone, a blemish on the pure 
And snowy lustre of its living light. 
No radiant gem shone beautifully through 
The shadowing of her tresses, as a star 
Through the dark sky of midnight ; and no 

wreath 
Of coral circled on her queenly neck. 
In mockery of the glowing cheek and lip, 
Whose hue the fairy guardian of the flowers 
Might never rival when her delicate touch 
Tinges the rose of springtime. 

Unadorned, 
Save by her youthful charms, and with a garb 
Simple as Nature's self, why turn to her 
The proud and gifted, and the versed in all 
The pageantry of fashion ? 

She h.ath not 
Moved down the dance to music, when the hall 
Is lighted up like sunshine, and the tluill 
Of the light viol and the mellow flute, 
And the deep tones of manhood, softened down 
To very music melt upon the ear. — 
She has not mingled with the hollow world 
Nor tampered with its mockeries, until all 
The delicate perceptions of the heart. 
The innate modesty, the watchful sense 
Of maiden dignity, are lost within 
The maze of fjishion and the din of crowds. 

Yet Beauty hath its homage. Kings have 

bowed 
From the tall majesty of ancient thronos 
With a prostrated knee, yea, cast aside 
The awfuluess of time-created power 



For the regardful glances of a child. 
Yea, the high ones and powerful of Earth, 
The helmed sons of victorj% the grave 
And schooled philosophers, the giant men j 
Of overmastering intellect, have turned 
Each from the separate idol of liis high 
And vehement ambition for the low 
Idolatry of human loveliness ; 
And bartered the sublimity of mind, 
The godlike and commanding intellect 
Which nations knelt to, for a woman's tear, 
A soft-toned answer, or a wanton's smile. 

And in the chastened beauty of that eye. 

And in tlie beautiful play of that red lip. 

And in the quiet smile, and in the voice 

Sweet as the tuneful greeting of a bird 

To the first flowers of springtime, there is more 

Than the perfection of the painter's skill 

Or statuary's moulding. Mind is there. 

The pure and holy attributes of soul, 

The seal of virtue, the exceeding grace 

Of meekness blended with a maiden pride ; 

Nor deem ye that beneath the gentle smile, 

And the calm temper of a chastened mind 

No warmth of passion kindles, and no tide 

Of quick and earnest feeling courses on 

From the warm heart's pulsations. There are 

springs 
Of deep and pure affection, hidden now. 
Within that quiet bosom, which but wait 
The thrilling of some kindly touch, to flow 
Like waters from the Desert-rock of old. 



BOLIVAR 

A DIRGE is wailing from the Gulf of storm- 
vexed Mexico, 

To where through Pampas' solitudes the mighty 
rivers flow ; 

The dark Sierras hear the sound, and from each 
mountain rift, 

WTiere Andes and Cordilleras their awful sum- 
mits lift. 

Where Cotopaxi's fiery eye glares redly upon 
heaven. 

And Chimborazo's shattered peak the upper 
sky has riven ; 

From mount to mount, from wave to wave, a 
wild and long lament, 

A sob that shakes like her earthquakes the 
startled continent ! 

A light dies out, a life is sped — the hero's at 
whose word 

The nations started as from sleep, and girded 
on the sword ; 

The victor of a hundred fields where blood was 
poured like rain. 

And Freedom's loosened avalanche hurled down 
the hosts of Spain, 

The eagle soul on Junin's slope who showed his 
shouting men 

A grander sight than Balboa saw from wave- 
washed Darien, 



492 



APPENDIX 



As from the snows with battle red died out the 

sinking sun, 
Aud broad and vast beneath him lay a world 

for freedom won. 

How died that victor ? In the field with ban- 
ners o'er him thrown, 

With trumpets in his failing ear, by chai^ng 
squadrons blown, 

With scattered foenien flying fast and fearfully 
before him, 

With shouts of triumph swelling round and 
brave men bending o'er him? 

Not on his fields of victory, nor in his council 
hall. 

The worn and sorrowing leader heard the inev- 
itable call. 

Alone he perislied in the land he saved from 
slaverj''s ban, 

Maligned and doubted and denied, a broken- 
hearted man ! 

Now let the New World's banners droop above 

the fallen chief, 
And let the mountaineer's dark eyes be wet 

with tears of grief ! 
For slander's sting, for envy's hiss, for friend- 
ship hatred grown, 
Can funeral pomp, and tolling bell, and priestly 

mass atone '? 
Better to leave unmourned the dead than wrong 

men while they live ; 
What if the strong man failed or erred, could 

not his own forgive ? 
O people freed by him, repent above your hero's 

bier : 
The sole resource of late remorse is now his 

tomb to rear ! 



ISABELLA OF AUSTRIA 

Isabella, Infanta of Parma, and consort of 
Joseph of Austria, predicted her own death, 
immediately after her marriage with the Em- 
peror. Amidst the gayety and splendor of 
Vienna and Presburg, she was reserved and 
melancholy; she believed that Heaven had 
given her a view of the future, and that her 
child, the namesake of the great Maria The- 
resa, would perish with her. Her prediction 
was fulfilled. 

'Midst the palace bowers of Hungary, imperial 

Presburg's pride, 
With the noble born and beautiful assembled 

at her side. 
She stood beneath the summer heavens, the soft 

wind sighing on. 
Stirring the green and arching boughs like 

dancers in the sun. 
The beautiful pomegranate flower, the snowy 

orange bloom. 
The lotus and the trailing vine, the rose's 

meek perfume. 



The willow crossing with its green some statue's 

marble hair. 
All that might charm the fresh young sense, or 

light the soul, was there I 

But she, a monarch's treasured one, leaned 

gloomily apart. 
With lier dark eyes tearfully cast down; and 

a shadow on her heart. 
Young, beautiful, and dearly loved, what sorrow 

hath she known ? 
Are not the liearts and swords of all held 

sacred as her own ? 
Is not her lord the kingliest in battle-field or 

tower ? 
The wisest in the council-hall, the gayest in 

the bower ? 
Is not his love as fuU and deep as his own 

Danube's tide ? 
And wherefore in lier princely home weeps 

Isabel, his bride ? 

She raised her jewelled hand, and flung her 

veiling tresses back. 
Bathing its snowy tapering within their glossy 

black. 
A tear fell on the orange leaves, rich gem and 

mimic blossom. 
And fringed robe shook fearfully upon her 

sigliing bosom. 
"Smile on, smile on," she murmured low, 

" for all is joy around. 
Shadow and sunsliine, stainless sky, soft airs, 

and blossomed ground. 
'Tis meet the light of heart should smile, 

when nature's smile is fair. 
And melody and fragrance meet, twin sisters 

of the air. 

" But ask me not to share with you the beauty 

of the scene. 
The fountain-fall, mosaic walk, and breadths 

of tender green ; 
And point not to the mild blue sky, or glorious 

summer sun, 
I know how very fair is all the hand of God 

has done. 
The hills, the sky, the sunlit cloud, the waters 

leaping forth. 
The swaying trees, the scented flowers, the 

dark green robes of earth, — 
I love them well, but I have learned to turn 

aside from all, 
And nevermore my heart must own their 

sweet but fatal tlirall. 

" And I could love the noble one whose mighty 
name I bear. 

And closer to my breaking heart his princely 
image wear. 

And I could love our sweet young flower, un- 
folding day by day. 

And taste of that unearthly joy which mothers 
only may. — 

But what am I to cling to these ? — A voice is 
in my ear, 



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493 



A shadow lingers at my side, the death-wail 

and the bier ! 
The cold and starless night of Death where 

daj' may never beam, 
The sik^nce and t'orgetfulness, the sleep that 

hath no dream I 

*'0 God, to leave this fair bright world, and 
more than all to know 

The moment when the Spectral One shall 
strike his fearful blow ; 

To know the day, the very hour, to feel the 
tide roll on, 

To shudder at the gloom before and weep the 
sunshine gone ; 

To count tho days, the few short days, of light 
and love and breath 

Between me and the noisome grave, the voice- 
less home of death ! 

Alas I — if feeling, knowing this, I murmur at 
my doom. 

Let not thy frowning, my God ! lend dark- 
ness to the tomb. 

"Oh, I have borne my spirit up, and smiled 

amidst the cliill 
Remembrance of my certain doom which lin- 
gers with me still ; 
I would not cloud my fair child's brow, nor let 

a tear-drop dim 
The eye that met my wedded lord's, lest it 

should sadden him ; 
But there are moments when the strength of 

feeling must have way ; 
That hidden tide of unnamed woe nor fear nor 

love can stay. 
Smile on, smile on, light-hearted ones ! Your 

smi of joy is high : 
Smile on, and leave the doomed of Heaven 

alone to weep and die ! " 

A funeral chant was wailing through Vienna's 

holy pile, 
A coffin with its gorgeous pall was borne along 

the aisle ; 
The drooping flags of many lands waved slow 

above the di'ad, 
A mighty band of mourners came, a king was 

at its head, — 
A youthful king, with mournful tread, and 

dim and tearful eye ; 
He scarce had dreamed that one so pure as his 

fair bride could die. 
And sad and long above the throng the funeral 

anthem rung : 
" Mourn for the hope of Austria ! Mourn for 

the loved and young ! " 

The wail went up from other lands, the valleys 
of the Hun, 

Fair Parma with its orange bowers, and hills of 
vine and sun : 

The lilies of imperial France drooped as the 
sound went by. 

The long lament of cloistered Spain was min- 
gled with the cry. 



The dwellers in Colorno's halls, the Slowak at 

his cave, 
The bowed at the Escurial, the Magyar stoutly 

brave. 
All wept the early stricken flower ; and still 

the anthem rung : 
"Mourn for the pride of Austria! Mourn for 

the loved and young ! " 



THE FRATRICIDE 

He stood on the brow of the well-known hill, 
Its few gray oaks moan'd over him still ; 
The last of that forest which cast the gloom 
Of its shadow at eve o'er his childhood's home ; 
And the beautiful valley beneath him lay 
With its quivering leaves, and its streams at 

play, 
And the sunshine over it all the while 
Like the golden shower of the Eastern isle. 

He knew the rock with its fingering vine. 
And its gray top touch'd by the slant sunshine. 
And the delicate stream which crept beneath 
ISoft as the flow of an infant's breath ; 
And the flowers which lean'd to the West 

wind's sigh. 
Kissing each ripple which glided by ; 
And he knew every valley and wooded swell, 
For the visions of childhood are treasured well. 

Why shook the old man as his eye glanced down 
That narrow ravine where the rude cliffs frown. 
With their shaggy brows and their teeth of 

stone. 
And their grim shade back from the sunlight 

thrown ? 
What saw he there save the dreary glen. 
Where the shy fox crept from the eye of men, 
And the great owl sat on the leafy limb 
That the hateful sun might not look on him ? 

Fix'd, glassy, and strange was that old mau^s 

eye. 
As if a spectre were stealing by, 
And glared it still on that narrow dell 
Where thicker and browner the twilight fell ; 
Yet at every sigh of the fitful wind, 
Or stirring of leaves in the wood behind. 
His wild glance wander'd the landscape o'er, 
Then fix'd on that desolate dell once more. 

Oh, who shall tell of the thoughts which ran 
Through the dizzied brain of that gray old 

man ? 
His childhood's home, and his father's toil. 
And his sister's kiss, and his mother's smile, 
And his brother's laughter and gamesome mirth. 
At the village school and the winter hearth ; 
The beautiful thoughts of his early time, 
Ere his heart grew dark with its later crime. 

And darker and wilder his visions came 
Of the deadly feud and the midnight flame. 
Of the Indian's knife with its slaughter red. 
Of the ghastly forms of the scalpless dead, 



494 



APPENDIX 



Of his own fierce deeds in that fearful hour 
When the terrible Brandt was forth in power, 
And he clasp'd his hands o'er his burning eye 
To shadow the vision which glided by. 

It came with the rush of the battle-storm — 
With a brother's shaken and kneeling form, 
And his prayer for life when a brother's arm 
Was lifted above him for mortal harm, 
And the fiendish curse, and the groan of death. 
And the welling of blood, and the gurgling 

breath. 
And the scalp torn off while each nerve could 

feel 
The wrenching hand and the jagged steel I 

And the old man groan'd — for he saw, again. 
The mangled corse of his kinsman slain. 
As it lay where his hand had hurl'd it then, 
At the shadow'd foot of that fearful glen ! 
And it rose erect, with the death-pang grim, 
And pointed its bloodied finger at him ! 
And his heart grew cold — and the curse of 

Cain 
Burn'd hke a fire in the old man's brain. 

Oh, had he not seen that spectre rise 
On the blue of the cold Canadian skies ? 
From the lakes which sleep in the ancient 

wood. 
It had risen to whisper its tale of blood. 
And follow'd his bark to the sombre shore. 
And glared by night through the wigwam door ; 
And here, on his own familiar hill, 
It rose on his haunted vision still ! 

Whose corse was that which the morrow's 

sun, 
Through the opening boughs, look'd cabnly 

on? 
There were those who bent o'er that rigid face 
Who well in its darken'd lines might trace 
The features of him who, a traitor, fled 
From a brother whose blood himself had shed. 
And there, on the spot where he strangely died, 
They made the grave of the Fratricide 1 



ISABEL 

I DO not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art 

most fair I 
I know the tempting of thy lips, the witchcraft 

of thy hair, 
The winsome smile that might beguile the shy 

bird from his tree ; 
But from their spell I know so well, I shake my 

manhood free. 

I might have loved thee, Isabel; I know I 
should if aught 

Of all thy words and ways had told of one un- 
selfish thought ; 

If through the cloud of fashion, the pictured 
veil of art. 

One casual flash had broken warm, earnest 
from the heai't. 



But words are idle, Isabel, and if I praise or 

blame. 
Or cheer or warn, it matters not ; thy life will 

be the same ; 
Still free to use, and still abuse, unmindful of 

the harm. 
The fatal gift of beauty, the power to choose 

and charm. 

Then go thy way, fair Isabel, nor heed that 

from thy train 
A doubtful follower falls away, enough will still 

remain. 
But wliat the long-rebuking years may bring to 

them or thee 
No prophet and no prophet's son am I to guess 

or see. 

I do not love thee, Isabel ; I would as soon put 

on 
A crown of slender frost-work beneath the 

heated sun, 
Or chase the winds of sunnner, or trust the 

sleeping sea, 
Or lean upon a shadow as think of loving thee. 



STANZAS 

Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one. 
Of brown in the shadow and gold in the sun ! 
Free should their delicate lustre be thrown 
O'er a forehead more pure than the Parian 

stone ; 
Shaming the light of those Orient pearls 
Which bind o'er its wliiteness thy soft wreath- 
ing curls. 

Smile, for thy glance on the mirror is thrown. 
And the face of an angel is meeting thine 

own ! 
Beautiful creature, I marvel not 
That thy cheek a lovelier tint hath caught ; 
And the kindling light of thine eye hath told 
Of a dearer wealth than the miser's gold. 

Away, away, there is danger here ! 

A terrible phantom is bending near : 

Ghastly and sunken, his rayless eye 

Scowls on thy loveliness scornfully. 

With no human look, with no human breath, 

He stands beside thee, the haunter. Death 1 

Fly ! but, alas ! he will follow still. 
Like a moonlight shadow, beyond thy will ; 
In thy noonday walk, in thy midnight sleep, 
Close at thy hand will that phantom keep ; 
Still in thine ear shall his whispers be ; 
Woe, that such phantom should follow thee ! 

In the lighted hall where the dancers go. 

Like beautiful spirits, to and fro ; 

When thy fair arms glance in their stainless 

white, 
Like ivory bathed in still moonlight ; 
And not one star in the holy sky 
Hath a clearer light than thine own blue eye I 



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495 



Oh, then, even then, he will follow thee, 
A3 the ripple follows the bark at sea ; 
In the soften'd lifjht, in the turning dance, 
He will fix on thine his dead, cold glance ; 
The chill of his breath on thy cheek shall linger. 
And thy warm blood shrink from his icy finger I 

And yet there is hope. Embrace it now, 
While thy soul is open as thy brow ; 
While thy heart is fresh, while its feelings still 
Gush clear as the unsoU'd mountain-rill ; 
And thy smiles are free as the airs of spring, 
Greeting and blessing each breathing thing, 

WTien the after cares of thy life shall come. 
When the bud shall wither before its bloom ; 
When thy soul is sick of the emptiness 
And changeful fashion of human bliss ; 
When the weary torpor of blighted feeling 
Over thy heart as ice is stealing ; 

Then, when thy spirit is tum'd above. 
By the mild rebuke of the Chastener's love ; 
When the hope of that joy in thy heart is stirr'd. 
Which eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, 
Then will that phantom of darkness be 
Gladness, and promise, and bliss to thee. 



MOGG MEGONE 

This poem was commenced in 1830, but 
did not assume its present shape until four 
years after. It deals with the border strife of 
the early settlers of eastern New England and 
their savage neighbors ; but its personages 
and incidents are mainly fictitious. Looking 
at it, at the present time, it suggests the idea 
of a big Indian in his war-paint strutting 
about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid. 



Who stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone, 
Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky. 
Where the spray of the cataract sparkles on 
high. 
Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Megone ? 
Close to the verge of the rock is he, 
While beneath him the Saco its work is do- 
ing. 
Hurrying down to its grave, the sea. 
And slow through the rock its pathway hew- 
ing! 
Far down, through the mist of the falling river, 
Which rises up like an incense ever. 
The spUntered points of the crags are seen. 
With water howling and vexed between. 
While the scooping whirl of the pool beneath 
Seems an open throat, mth its granite teeth 1 

But Mogg Megone never trembled yet 

Wherever his eye or his foot was set. 

He is watchful: each form in the moonlight 

dim. 
Of rock or of tree, is ssen of him : 



He listens ; each sound from afar is caught. 

The faintest shiver of leaf and limb : 

But he sees not the waters, which foam and 

fret. 
Whose mooidit spray has Ids moccasin wet, — 
And the roar of their rushing, he hears it not. 

The moonlight, through the open bough 

Of the gnarl'd beech, whose naked root 

Coils likfc a serpent at his foot, 
Falls, checkered, on the Indian's brow^ 
His head is bare, save only where 
Waves in the wind one lock of hair, 

Reserved for him, whoe'er he be. 
More mighty than Megone in strife. 

When breast to breast and knee to knee. 
Above the fallen warrior's life 
Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping-knife. 

Megone hath his knife and hatchet and gun. 
And his gaudy and tasselled blanket on : 
His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid. 
And magic words on its polished blade, — 
'T was the gift of Castine to Mogg Megone, 
For a scalp or twain from the Yengees torn : 
His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine, 

And Modocawando's wives had strung 
The brass and the beads, which tinkle and shine 
On the polished breech, and broad bright line 

Of beaded wampum around it hung. 

What seeks Megone ? His foes are near, — 

Grey Jocelyn's eye is never sleeping. 
And the garrison lights are burning clear. 

Where Phillips' men their watch are keeping. 
Let him hie him away through the dank river 
fog. 
Never rustling the boughs nor displacing the 
rocks. 
For the eyes and the ears which are watching 
for Mogg 
Are keener than those of the wolf or the fox. 

He starts, — there 's a rustle among the leaver : 

Another, — the click of his gun is heard 1 
A footstep, — is it the step of Cleaves, 

With Indian blood on his English sword ? 
Steals Harmon down from the sands of York, 
With hand of iron and foot of cork ? 
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile. 
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle ? 
Hark I at that whistle, soft and low, 

How lights the eye of Mogg Megone I 
A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow, — 

" Boon welcome, Johnny Boniton 1 " 

Out steps, with cautious foot and slow, 
And quick, keen glances to and fro, 

The hunted outlaw, Boniton ! 
A low, lean, swarthy man is he, 
With blanket-garb and buskined knee, 

And naught of English fashion on ; 
For he hates the race from whence he sprung. 
And he couches his words in the Indian tongue. 

" Hush, — let the Sachem's voice be weak ; 
The water-rat shall hear him speak, — 



496 



APPENDIX 



The owl shall whoop in the white man's ear. 
That Mo™ Me^one, with his scalps, is here ! " 
He pauses, — dark, over cheek and brow, 
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now : 
" Sachem ! " he says, " let me have the land. 
Which stretches away upon either hand. 
As far about as my feet can stray 
In the half of a gentle summer's day, 

From the leaping brook to the Saco river, — 
And the fair - haired girl thou hast sought of 

me 
Shall sit in the Sachem's wigwam, and be 

The wife of Mogg Megone forever." 

There 's a sudden light in the Indian's glance, 
A moment's trace of powerful feeling. 

Of love or triumph, or both perchance, 
Over his proud, calm features stealing, 

" The words of my father are very good ; 

He shall have the land, and water, and wood ; 

And he who harms the Sagamore John, 

Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone ; 

But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep on my 
breast, 

And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my 



" But, father ! " — and the Indian's hand 

Falls gently on the white man's arm. 
And with a smile as shrewdly bland 

As the deep voice is slow and calm, — 
" Where is my father's singing-bird, — 

The sunny eye, and sunset hair ? 
I know I have my father's word 

And that his word is good and fair ; 

But will my father tell me where 
Megone shall go and look for his bride ? — 
For he sees her not by her father's side." 

The dark, stern eye of Boniton 

Flashes over the features of Mogg Megone, 
In one of those glances which search within ; 

But the stolid calm of the Indian alone 
Remains where the trace of emotion has been. 

" Does the Sachem doubt ? Let him go with 
me. 

And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall see." 

Cautious and slow, with pauses oft, 
Aud watchful eyes and whispers soft, 
The twain are stealing through the wood, 
Leaving the downward-rushing flood. 
Whose deep and solemn roar behind 
Grows fainter on the evening wind. 

Hark ! — is that the angry howl 
Of the wolf, the hills among ? ^ 

Or the hooting of the owl. 
On his leafy cradle swung ? — 

Quickly glancing, to and fro, 

Listening to each sound they go 

Round the columns of the pine. 
Indistinct, in shadow, seeming 

Like some old and pillared shrine ; 

With the soft and white moonshine, 

Round the foliage-tracery shed 

Of each column's branching head, / 



For its lamps of worship gleaming 1 
And the sounds awakened there. 

In the pine-leaves fine and small. 

Soft and sweetly musical, 
By the fingers of the air. 
For the anthem's dying fall 
Lingering round some temple's wall I 
Niche and cornice round and round 
Wailing like the ghost of sound ! 
Is not Nature's worship thus, 

Ceaseless ever, going on ? 
Hath it not a voice for us 

In the thunder, or the tone 
Of the leaf-harp faint and small, 

Speaking to the unseali d ear 

Words of blended love and fear, 
Of the mighty Soul of all ? 

Naught had the twain of thoughts like these 
As they wound along through the crowded trees, 
Where never had rung the axeman's stroke 
On the gnarled trunk of the rough -barked 

oak ; — 
Climbing the dead tree's mossy log, 
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine, 
Turning aside the wild gi-apevine. 
And lightly crossing the quaking bog 
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the frog. 
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog 
Creeps into the chill moonshine ! 

Yet, even that Indian's ear had heard 
The preaching of the Holy Word : 
Sanchekantacket's isle of sand 
Was once his father's hunting land. 
Where zealous Hiacoomes stood, — 
The wild apostle of the wood, 
Shook from his soul the fear of harm. 
And trampled on the Powwaw's charm ; 
Until the wizard's curses hung 
Suspended on his palsying tongue, 
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall, 
Trambled before the foi-est Paul ! 

A cottage hidden in the wood, — 

Red through its seams a light is glowing, 
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude, 

A narrow lustre throwing. 
" Who 's there ? " a clear, firm voice detnandaj 

" Hold, Ruth, — 't is I, the Sagamore 1 " 
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands 

Unclose the bolted door ; 
And on the outlaw's daughter shine 
The flashes of the kindled pine. 

Tall and erect the maiden stands, 

Like some young priestess of the wood, 
The freeborn child of Solitude, 
And bearing still the wild and rude, 
Yet noble trace of Nature's hands. 
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain 
More from the sunshine than the rain ; 
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting, 
A pure white brow into light is starting ; 
And, where the folds of her blanket sever. 
Are neck and a bosom as white as ever 
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river. 



EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES 



497 



Hut in tlie convulsive quiver and grip 
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip, 

Tliert is something painful and sad to see ; 
And her eye has a glance more sternly wild 
Than even that of a forest child 

In its fearless and iintanud freedom should 
be. 
Yet, seldom in hall or court are seen 
ISo queenly a form and so noble a mien. 

As freely and smiling she welcomes them 
there, — 
Her outlawed sire and Mogg Megone : 

" Prav, father, how does thy hunting fare ? 



And. 



ciu, say, — (Iocs Scaniniau wear, 
ly pniniise. a siMlp of his own? " 



Hurried and light is the maiden's tone ; 

But a fearful meaning lurks within 
Her glance, as it questions the eye of Me- 
gone, — 

An awful meaning of guilt and sin ! — 
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and there 
Hangs a liuman scalp by its long damp hair ! 
With hand upraised, with quick-drawn breath, 
She meets that ghastly sign of death. 
In one long, glassy, spectral stare 
The enlarging eye is fastened there, 
As if that mesh of pale brown hair 

Had power to change at sight alone. 
Even as the fearful locks which wound 
Medusa's fatal forehead round, 

The gazer into stone. 
With such a look Herodias read 
The features of the bleeding head, 
So looked the mad Moor on his dead, 
Or the young Cenci as she stood. 
O'er- dabbled with a father's blood ! 

Look ! — feeling melts that frozen glance, 
It moves that marble countenance. 
As if at once within her strove 
Pity with shame, and hate with love. 
The Past recalls its joy and pain. 
Old memories rise before her brain, — 
The lips which love's embraces met, 
The hand her tears of parting wet, 
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled 
The pleased ear of the forest-child, — 
And tears she may no more repress 
Reveal her lingering tenderness. 

Oh, woman wronged can cherish hate 

More deep and dark than manhood may ; 
But when the mockery of Fate 

Hath left Revenge its chosen way. 
And the fell curse, which years have nursed, 
Full on the spoiler's head hath burst, — 
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain. 
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain, — 
Still lingers something of the spell 

Which bound her to the traitor's bosom, — 
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell, 

Some flowers of old affection blossom. 

John Boniton's eyebrows together are drawn 
With a fierce expression of wrath and scorn, — 
He hoarsely whispers, " Ruth, beware ! 
Is this the time to be playing the fool, — 



Crying over a paltry lock of hair. 

Like a love-sick girl at school ? — 
Curse on it ! — an Indian can see and hear ; 
Away, —and prepare our evening cheer! " 

How keenly the Indian is watching now 
Her tearful eye and her varying brow, — 
With a serpent eye, which kindles and burns.. 
Like a fiery star in the upper air : 
On sire and daughter his fierce glance turns : — 
" Has my old white father a scalp to spare? 
For his young one loves the pale brown hair 
Of the scalp of an English dog far more 
Than Mogg Megone, or his Avigwam floor ; 
Go, ^^Mogg is wise : he will keep his land, — 
And Sagamore John, when he feels with his 
hand. 
Shall miss his scalp where it grew before." 

The moment's gust of grief is gone, — 

The lip is clenched, — the tears are still, — 
God pity thee, Ruth Boniton ! 
With what a strength of will 
Are nature's feelings in thy breast, 
As with an iron hand, repressed ! 
And how, upon that nameless woe. 
Quick as the pulse can come and go, 
While shakes the uusteadfast knee, and yet 
The bosom heaves, — the eye is wet, — 
Has thy dark spirit power to stay 
The heart's wild current on its way ? 

And whence that baleful strength of guile. 
Which over that still working brow 
And tearful eye and cheek can throw 

The mockery of a smile '? 
Warned by her father's blackening frown. 
With one strong effort crushing down 
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again 
The savage murderer's sullen gaze, 
And scarcely look or tone betrays 
How the heart strives beneath its chain, 

" Is the Sachem angry, — angry with Knth, 
Because she cries with an ache in her tooth, — 
Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry, 
And look about with a woman's eye ? 
No, — Ruth will sit in the Sachem's door 
And braid the mats for his wigwam floor, 
And broil his fish and tender fawn. 
And weave his wampum, and grind his corn, — 
For she loves the brave and the wise, and none 
Are braver and wiser than Mogg Megone ! " 

The Indian's brow is clear once more : 

With grave, calm face, and half-shut eye, 
He sits upon the wigwam floor. 

And watches Ruth go by. 
Intent upon her household care ; 

And ever and anon, the while. 
Or on the maiden, or her fare. 
Which smokes in grateful pi'omise there, 

Bestows his quiet smile. 



Ah, Mogg Megone ! — what dreams are thine. 
But those which love's own fancies dress, — 
The sum of Indian happiness ! — 



498 



APPENDIX 



A wigwam, where the warm sunshine 
Looks in among the groves of pine, — 
A stream, where, round thy light canoe. 
The trout and salmon dart in view. 
And the fair girl, before thee now, 
Spreading thy mat with hand of snow, 
Or plying, in the dews of morn. 
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn, 
Or offering up, at eve, to thee. 
Thy birchen dish of hominy ! 

From the rude board of Boniton, 

Venison and succotash have gone, — 

For long these dwellers of the wood 

Have felt the gnawing want of food. 

But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer, — 

With head averted, yet ready ear. 

She stands by the side of her austere sire. 

Feeding, at times, the unequal fire 

With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine tree, 

Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls 

On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls, 

And over its inmates three. 

From Sagamore Boniton's hunting flask 

The fire-water burns at the lip of Megone : 
" Will the Sachem hear what his father shall 
ask? 

Will he make his mark, that it may be known. 
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the land, 
From the Sachem's own, to his father's hand? " 
The fire-water shines in the Indian's eyes, 

As he rises, the white man's bidding to do : 
" Wuttamuttata — weekan ! Mogg is wise, — 

For the water he drinks is strong and new, — 
Mogg's heart is great ! — will he shut his hand. 
When his father asks for a little land ? " — 
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has drawn 

On the parchment the shape of a hunter's 
bow, 
*' Boon water, — boon water, — Sagamore John ! 

Wuttamuttata, — weekan ! our hearts will 
grow ! " 
He drinks yet deeper, — he mutters low, — 
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro, — 
His head falls down on his naked breast, — 
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest. 

"Humph — drunk as a beast!" — and Boni- 
ton's brow 

Is darker than ever with evil thought — 
" The fool has signed his warrant ; but how 

And when shall the deed be wrought ? 
Speak, Ruth ! why, what the devil is there. 
To fix thy gaze in that empty air ? — 
Siieak, Ruth ! by my soul, if I thought that tear 
Which shames thyself and our purpose here, 
Were shed for that cursed and pale-faced dog, 
^\niose green scalp hangs from the belt of Mogg, 

And whose beastly soul is in Satan's keeping ; 
This — this ! " — he dashes his hand upon 
The rattling stock of his loaded gun, — 

" Should send thee with him to do thy weep- 
ing! " 

" Father ! " — the eye of Boniton 
Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone, 



Hollow and deep, as it were spoken 
By the unmoving tongue of death, — 

Or from some statue's lips had broken,-— 
A sound without a breath ! 

" Father ! — my life I value less 

Than yonder fool his gaudy dress ; 

And how it ends it matters not. 

By heart-break or by rifle-shot ; 

But spare awhile the scoff and threat, — 

Our business is not finished yet." 

"True, true, my girl, — I only meant 

To draw up again the bow unbent. 

Harm thee, my Ruth ! I only sought 

To frighten off thy gloomy thought ; 

Come, — let 's be friends ! " He seeks to clasp 

His daughter's cold, damp hand in his, 

Ruth startles from her father's grasji, 

As if each nerve and muscle felt, 

Instinctively, the touch of guilt 

Through all their subtle sympathies. 

He points her to the sleeping Mogg : 
" What shall be done with yonder dog? 
Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine, — 
The deed is signed and the land is mine ; 
And this di-unken fool is of use no more. 
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and sooth, 
'T were Christian mercy to finish him, Ruth, 
Now, while he lies like a beast on our floor, — 
If not for thine, at least for his sake. 
Rather than let the poor dog awake 
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride 
Such a forest devil to run by his side, — 
Such a Wetuomanit as thou wouldst make ! " 

He laughs at his jest. Hush — what is there ? — • 
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise. 
With his knife in his hand, and glaring eyes !— 
" Wagh ! — Mogg will have the pale-face's hair. 
For his knife is sharp, and his fingers can help 
The hair to pull and the skin to peel, -- 
Let him cry like a woman and twist like an eel. 
The great Captain Scamman must lose his 
scalp ! 
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance with 

Mogg." 
His eyes are fixed, — but his lips dra\y in, -- 
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish grin,— 
And he sinks again, like a senseless log, 

Ruth does not speak, — she does not stir ; 
But slie gazes down on the murderer, 
AMiose broken and dreamful slumbers tell 
Too much for her ear of that deed of hell. 
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red. 
And the dark fingers clenching the bearskia 

bed ! 
What thoughts of horror and madness whirl 
Through the burning brain of that fallen girl ! 

John Boniton lifts his gun to his eye. 

Its muzzle is close to the Indian's ear, — 
But he drops it again. "Some one may be 
nigh. 
And I would not that even the wolves should 
hear," 



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He draws his knife from his deer-skin belt, — 
Its ed!J:e witli his fingera is slowly felt ; — 
Kneelinfj down on one knee, by the Indian's 

side, 
From his throat he opens the blanket wide ; 
And twice or tlirice he feebly essays 
A trembling hand with the knife to raise. 

" I cannot," — he mutters, — " did he not save 
My life from a cold and Avintry grave, 
Wlien the storm came down from Agiochook, 
And the north-wind howled, and the tree-to[)s 

shook. — 
A.nd I strove, in the drifts of the rushing snow. 
Till my knees grew weak and I could not go. 
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep. 
And my heart's blood stiffen, and pulses sleep ! 
I cannot strike him — Kutli lionitun I 
In the Devil's name, tell me — what "s to be 

done ? " 

Oh, when the soul, once pure and high, 
Is stricken down from Virtue's skj"^. 
As, with the downcast star of morn. 
Some gems of light are with it drawn. 
And, through its night of darkness, play 
Some tokens of its primal day. 
Some lofty feelings linger still, — 

The strength to dare, the nerve to meet 

Whatever threatens with defeat 
Its all-indomitable will ! — 
But lacks the mean of mind and heart, 
Though eager for the gains of crime, 
Or, at his chosen place and time. 
The strength to bear his evil part ; 
And, shielded by his very Vice, 
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice. 

Ruth starts erect, — with bloodshot eye, 

And lips drawn tight across her teeth 
Showing their locked embrace beneath. 
In the red firelight : '' Mogg must die ! 
Give me the knife ! ' ' The outlaw turns, 

Shuddering in heart and limb .away. 
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns. 

And he sees on the wall strange shadows 
play. 
A lifted arm, a tremulous blade. 
Are dimly pictured in light and shade. 

Plunging down in the darkness. Hark, that 
cry 
Again — and again — he sees it fall, 
That sliadowy arm down the lighted wall ! 

He hears quick footsteps — a shape flits by — 
The door on its rusted hinges creaks : — 
"Ruth.— daughtei Ruth ! " the outlaw shrieks. 
But no sound comes back, — he is standing 

alone 
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone ! 



'T IS morning over Norridgewock, — 
On tree and wdgwam, wave and rock. 
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred 
At intervals by breeze and bird. 



And wearing all the hues which glow 
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow. 

That glorious picture of the air. 
Which summer's light-robed angel forms 
On the dark ground of fading storms. 

With pencil dipped in sunbeams there, — 
And, stretching out, on either hand, 
0]er all that wide and unshorn land, 
Till, weary of its gorgeousness. 
The aching and the dazzled eye 
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky, — 

Slumbers the mighty wilderness ! 
The oak, upon the windy hill. 

Its dark green burthen upward heaves ^- 
The hemlock broods above its rill. 
Its cone-like foliage darker still. 

Against the birch's graceful stem, 
And the rough walnut-bough receives 
The sun upon its crowded leaves. 

Each colored like a topaz gem ; 

And the tall maple wears with them 
The coronal, which autumn gives. 

The brief, bright sign of ruin near, 

The hectic of a dying year ! 

The hermit priest, who lingers now 

On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow. 

The gray and thunder-smitten pile 

Which marks afar the Desert Isle, 
While gazing on the scene below, 
]May half forget the dreams of home. 
That nightly with his slumbers come, — 
The tranquil skies of sunny France, 
The peasant's harvest song and dance. 
The vines around the hillsides wreathing. 
The soft airs midst their clusters breathing. 
The wings which dipped, the stars wliich shone 
W^ithin thy bosom, blue Garonne ! 
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall. 
At morning spring and even-fall, 

Sweet voices in the still air singing, — 
The chant of many a holy hymn, — 

The solemn bell of vespers ringing, — 
And hallowed torchlight falling dim 
On pictui-ed saint and seraphim ! 
For here beneath him lies unrolled. 
Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold, 
A vision gorgeous as the dream 
Of the beatified may seem. 

When, as his Church's legends say, 
Born upward in ecstatic bliss. 

The rapt enthusiast soars away 
Unto a brighter world than this : 
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale, — 
A moment's lifting of the veil ! 

Far eastward o'er the lovely bay, 
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay ; 
And gently from that Indian town 
The verdant hillside slopes adown. 
To where the sparkling waters play 

Upon the yellow sands below ; 
And shooting round the winding shores 

Of narrow capes, and isles which lie 

Slumbering to ocean's lullaby, — 
With birchen boat and glancing oars, 
The red men to their fishing go ; 



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APPENDIX 



While from their phmting ground is borne 

The treasure of the golden corn, 

By liuighing girls, whose dark eyes glow 

Wild tlnongji the locks which o'er them flow. 

The wrinklcil squaw, whose toil is done, 

hits on her bear-skin in the sun. 

Watching the buskers, with a smile 

For each full ear which swells the pile ; 

And the old chief, who nevermore 

May bend the bow or pull the oar, 

Smokes gravely in his wigwam door, 

Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone, 

The arrow-head from flint and bone. 

Beneath the westward turning eye 
A thousand wooded islands lie. 
Gems of the waters ! with each hue 
Of brightness set in ocean's blue. 
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees 

Touched by the pencil of the frost, 
And, with the motion of each breeze, 

A moment seen, a moment lost. 

Changing and blent, confused and tossed, 

The brighter with the darker crossed, 
Their thousand tints of beauty glow 
Down in the restless waves below, 

And tremble in the sunny skies. 
As if, from waving bough to bough. 

Flitted the birds of paradise. 
There sleep Placentia's group, and there 
P^re Breteaux marks the hour of prayer ; 
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff. 

On which the Father's hut is seen. 
The Indian stays his rocking skiff, 

And peers the hemlock-boughs between, 
Half ti'erabling, as he seeks to look 
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book. 
There, gloomily against the sky 
The Dark Isles rear their summits high ; 
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare, 
Lifts its gray turrets in the air. 
Seen from afar, like some stronghold 
Built by the ocean kings of old ; 
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin. 
Swells in the north vast Katahdin : 
And, wandering from its marshy feet, 
The broad Penobscot comes to meet 

Aiid mingle with his own bright bay. 
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods. 
Arched over by the ancient woods. 
Which Time, in those dim solitudes. 

Wielding the dull axe of Decay, 

Alone hath ever shorn away. 

Not thus, within the woods which hide 
The beauty of thy azure tide, 

And with their falling timbers block 
Thy broken currents, Kennebec ! 
Gazes the white man on the wreck 

Of the down-trodden Norridgewock ; 
In one lone village hemmed at length. 
In battle shorn of half their strength. 
Turned, like the panther in his lair, 

With his fast-flowing life-blood wet, 
For one last struggle of despair. 

Wounded and faint, but tameless yet I 
Unreaped, upon the planting lands, 



The scant, neglected harvest stands : 

No shout is there, no dance, no song: 
The aspect of the very child 
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild 

Of bitterness and wrong. 
The almost infant Norridgewock 
Essays to lift the tomahawk ; 
And plucks his father's knife away, 
To mimic, in his frightful play. 

The scalping of an English foe : 
Wreathes on his hp a horrid smile. 
Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while 

Some bough or sapling meets his blow. 
The fisher, as he drops his line, 
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver 
Along the margin of the river, 
Looks up and down the rippling tide. 
And grasps the firelock at his side. 
For Bomazeen from Tacconock 
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock, 
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon of 
York 

Far up the river have come : 
They have left their boats, they have entered 

the wood. 
And filled the depths of the solitude 

With the sound of the ranger's drum. 

On the brow of a hill, which slopes to meet 
The flowing river, and bathe its feet ; 
The l)are-washed rock, and the drooping grass, 
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass, 
A rude and unshapely chapel stands. 
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands. 
Yet the traveller knows it a place of prayer. 
For the holy sign of the cross is there : 
And should he chance at that place to be. 

Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed day, 
When prayers are made and masses are said. 
Some for the living and some for the dead. 
Well might that traveller start to see 

The tall dark forms, that take their waj' 
From the birch canoe, on the river shore. 
And the forest paths, to that chapel door ; 
And marvel to mark the naked knees 

And the dusky foreheads bending there. 
While, in coaree white vesture, over these 

In blessing or in prayer. 
Stretching aliroad his thin pale hands, 
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit stands. 

Two forms are now in that chapel dim. 
The Jesviit, silent and sad and pale, 
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale. 

Which a stranger is telling him. 

That stranger's garb is soiled and torn. 

And wet with dew and loosely worn ; 

Her fair neglected hair falls down 

O'er clieeks with wind and sunshine brown; 

Yet still, in that disordered face. 

The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace 

Those elements of former grace 

Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less. 

Even now, than perfect loveliness. 

With drooping head, and voice so low 
That scarce it meets the Jesuit's ears, 



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While throupli her clasped fingei's flow, 
From the lieart's fountain, hot and slow, 

Her penitential tears, — 
She tells the story of the woe 

And evil of her yeai-s. 

" O father, bear with me ; my heart 
Is sick and death-like, and my brain 
Seems jifirdled with a fiery chain. 

Whose scorching links will never part, 
And never cool agrain. 

Bear with me while I speak, but turn 
Away that gentle eye, the while ; 

The files of f^iiilt more fiercely burn 
Bematli its holy smile ; 

For half I fancy 1 can see 

My mother's sainted look in thee. 

" My dear lost mother ! sad and pale, 
Mournfully sinking day by day, 

And with a hold on Ufe as frail 

As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray, 
Hang feebly on their parent spray, 

And tremble in the gale ; 

Yet watching o'er my childishness 

With patient fondness, not the less 

For all the agony which kept 

Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept ; 

And checking every tear and groan 

That haply niit,^lit have waked my own, 

And bearing still, without offence, 

Mv idle words, and petulance ; 
Reproving with a tear, and, Avhile 

The tooth of pain was keenly preying 

Upon her very heart, repaying 
My brief repentance with a smile. 

" Oh, in her meek, forgiving eye 

There was a brightness not of mirth, 
A light whose clear intensity 

Was borrowed not of earth. 
Along her cheek a deepening red 
Told where the feverish hectic fed ; 

And yet, each fatal token gave 
To the mild beauty of her face 
A newer and a dearer grace, 

Unwarning of the grave. 
'T was like the hue which Autumn gives 
To yonder changed and dying leaves, 

Breathed over by his frosty breath ; 
Scarce can the gazer feel that this 
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss. 

The mocking-smile of Death ! 

•' Sweet were the tales she used to tell 

When summer's eve was dear to us. 
And, fading from the darkening dell. 
The glory of the sunset fell 

On wooded Agamenticus, — 
When, sitting by our cottage wall, 
The murmur of the Saco's fall, 

And the south-wind's expiring sighs. 
Came, softly blending, on my ear 
With the low tones I loved to hear : 

Tales of the pure, the good, the wise, 
The holy men and maids of okl, 
In the all-sacred pages told ; 



Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's fountains, 
Amid her father's thirsty flock. 
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming 
As the bright angels of his dreaming, 

On Padan-aran's holy rock ; 
Of gentle Ruth, and her who kept 

Her awful vigil on the mountains, 
By Israel's virgin daughtei'S wept ; 
Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing 

The song for grateful Israel meet. 
While every ciimson wave was bringing 

The spoils of Egypt at her feet ; 
Of her, Samaria's humble daughter. 

Who paused to hear, beside her well, 

Lessons of love and truth, which fell 
Softly as Shiloh's flowing water ; 

And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise, 
The Promised One, so long foretold 
By holy seer and bard of old. 

Revealed before her wondering eyes I 

" Slowly she faded. Day by day 
Her step grew weaker in our hall. 
And fainter, at each even-fall. 

Her sad voice died away. 
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while, 
Sat Resig^nation's holy smile : 
And even my father checked his tread, 
And hushed his voice, beside her bed : 
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke 
Of her meek eye's imploring look. 
The scowl of hate his brow forsook. 

And in his stern and gloomy eye. 
At times, a few imwonted tears 
Wet the dark lashes, which for years 

Hatred and pride had kept so di-y. 

" Calm as a child to slumber soothed, 
As if an angel's hand had smoothed 

The still, white features into rest, 
Silent and cold, without a breath 

To stir the drapery on her breast. 
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang, 
The horror of the mortal pang. 
The suffering look her brow had worn. 
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone, — 

She slept at last in death ! 

" Oh, tell me, father, can the dead 
Walk on the earth, and look on us, 

And lay upon the living's head 
Their blessing or their curse ? 

For, oh, last night she stood by me. 

As I lay beneath the woodland tree ! " 

•The Jesuit crosses himself in awe, — 
" Jesu ! what was it my daughter saw ? '' 

" She came to me last night. 

The dried leaves did not feel her tread j 
She stood by me in the wan moonbght, 

Li the white robes of the dead ! 
Pale, and veiy mournfully 
She bent her light form over me. 
I heard no sound, I felt no breath 
Breathe o'er me from that face of death : 
Its blue eyes rested on my own, 



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APPENDIX 



Eayless and cold as eyes of stone ; 

Yet, in their fixed, unchanging- gaze, 

Something, which spoke of early days, — 

A sadness in their quiet glare. 

As if love's smile were frozen there, — 

Came o'er me with an icy thrill ; 

God ! I feel its presence still ! " 

The Jesuit makes the holy sign, — 

" How passed the vision, daughter mine ? " 

" All dimly in the wan moonshine. 
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine, 
And scatter, and melt into the light ; 
So scattering, melting on my sight, 

The pale, cold vision passed ; 
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine 

Mournfully to the last." 

" God help thee, daughter, tell me why 
That spirit passed before thine eye ! " 

" Father, I know not, save it be 
That deeds of mine have summoned her 
From the unbreathing sepulchre, 

To leave her last rebuke with me. 

Ah, woe for me ! my mother died 

Just at the moment when I stood 

Close on the verge of womanhood, 

A child in everything beside ; 

And when my wild heart needed most 

Her gentle counsels, they were lost. 

" My father lived a stormy life. 
Of frequent change and daily strife ; 
And — God' forgive him ! left his cluld 
To feel, like him, a freedom wild ; 
To love the red man's dwelling-place, 

The birch boat on his shaded floods, 
The -wild excitement of the chase 

Sweeping the ancient woods, 
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore 

Of the still lakes, the clear stream where 

The idle fisher sets his weir, 
Or angles in the shade, far more 

Than that restraining awe I felt 
Beneath my gentle mother's care, 

When nightly at her knee I knelt, 
With childhood's simple prayer. 

" There came a change. The wild, glad mood 

Of unchecked freedom passed. 
Amid the ancient solitude 
Of unshorn grass and waving wood 

And waters glancing bright and fast, 
A softened voice was in my ear, 
(Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine 
The hunter lifts his head to hear. 
Now far and faint, now full and near — 

The murmur of the wind-swept pine. 
A manly form was ever nigh, 
A bold, free hunter, with an eye 

Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake 
Both fear and love, to awe and charm ; 

'T was as the wizard rattlesnake. 
Whose evil glances lure to harm — 
Wliose cold and small and glittering eye, 



And brilliant coil, and changing dye, 
Draw, step by step, the gazer near, 
With drooping wing and cry of fear, 
Yet powerless all to turn away, 
A conscious, but a willing prey ! 

" Fear, doubt, thought, life itself, erelong 
Merged in one feeUng deep and strong. 
Faded the world which I had known, 

A poor vain shadow, cold and waste ; 
In the warm present bliss alone 

Seemed I of actual life to taste. 
Fond longings dimly understood. 
The glow of passion's quickening blood, 
And cherished fantasies which press 
The young lip with a dream's caress ; 
The heart's forecast and prophecy 
Took form and life before my eye. 
Seen in the glance which met my own. 
Heard in the soft and pleading tone. 
Felt in the arms around me cast. 
And warm heart-pulses beating fast. 
Ah ! scarcely yet to God above 
With deeper trust, with stronger love, 
Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent. 
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent, 
Than I, before a human shrine, 
As mortal and as frail as mine, 
With heart, and soul, and mind, and form, 
Knelt madly to a fellow-wonn. 

" Fidl soon, upon that dream of sin. 
An awful light came bursting in. 
The shrine was cold at which I knelt. 

The idol of that shrine was gone ; 
A humbled thing of shame and guilt. 

Outcast, and spurned and lone, 
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime, 

With withering heart and burning brain. 

And tears that fell like fiery rain, 
I passed a fearful time. 

" There came a voice — it checked the tear, 

In heart and soul it wrought a change ; 
My father's voice was in my ears ; 

It whispered of revenge ! 
A new and fiercer feeling swept 

All lingering tenderness away ; 
And tiger passions, which had slept 

In childhood's better day. 
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length 
In all their own demoniac strength. 

" A youthful warrior of the wild, 
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled. 
Of crime the cheated instrument, 
Upon our fatal errands went. 

Through camp and town and wilderness 
He tracked his victim ; and at last. 
Just when the tide of hate had passed. 
And milder thoughts came warm and fast. 
Exulting, at my feet he cast 

The bloody token of success. 

" O God ! with what an awful power 

I saw the buried past uprise, 
And gather, in a single hour. 



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Its ghostlike memories ! 
And then I felt, alas ! too late, 

Tliat underneath the mask of hate. 
That sliame and fjuilt and wroni^ had thrown 
O'er feelings which they might not own, 

The heart's wild love had known no change ; 
And still tliat deep and hidden love, 
With its first fondness, wept above 

The victim of its own revenge ! 
Tlieie lay tlie fearful scalp, and there 
The blood was on its pale brown hair ! 
I thought not of the victim's scorn, 

1 thought not of his baleful guile. 
My deadly wrong, ray outc;ist name, 
The characters of sin and shame 
On heart and forehead drawn ; 

I only saw that victim's smile, 
The stUl green places where we met, — 
The moonlit branches, dewy wet ; 
I only felt, I only heard. 
The greeting and the parting word, — 
The smile, the embrace, the tone, which made 

An Eden of the forest shade. 

" And oh, with what a loathing eye. 

With what a deadly hate, and deep, 
I saw that Indian murderer lie 

Before me, in his drunken sleep ! 
Wliat though for me the deed was done, 
And words of mine had sped him on ! 
Yet when he murmured, as he slept, 

The horrors of that deed of blood, 
The tide of utter madness swept 

O'er brain and bosom, like a flood. 
And, father, with this hand of mine " — 

" Ha ! what didst thou ? " the Jesiiit cries, 
Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain. 

And sliading, with one thin hand, his eyes, 
W^ith the other he makes the holy sign. 
" — I smote him as I would a worm ; 
With heart as steeled, with nerves as firm : 

He never woke again ! " 

" Woman of sin and blood and shame. 
Speak, I would know tha't victim's name." 

"Fatlier," she gasped, "a chieftain, known 
As Saco's Sachem, — Mogg Megone ! " 

Pale priest ! What proud and lofty dreams. 
What keen desires, what cherished schemes, 
What hopes, that time maj' not recall. 
Are darkened by that chieftain's fall ! 
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow, 

To lift the hatchet of his sire. 
And, round his own, the Church's foe. 

To light the avenging fire ? 
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake. 
For thine and for the Church's sake ? 

Who summon to the scene 
Of conquest and unsparing strife. 
And vengeance dearer than his life, 

The fiery-souled Castine ? 
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes, 
His long, thin frame as ague shakes; 

And loathing hate is in his eye. 
As from his lips these words of fear 



Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear, — 

" The soul that sinneth shall surely die I " 

She stands, as stands the stricken deer. 
Checked midway in the fearful chase. 

When burets, upon his eye and ear. 

The gaunt, gray robber, bajnng near, 
Between him and his hiding-place ; 

While still behind, ^vith yell and blow. 

Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe. 

" Save me, holy man ! " her cry 
Fills all the void, as if a tongue 
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung. 

Thrilling with mortal agony ; 

Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's knee, 
And her eye looks fearfully into his own ; — 

" Off, woman of sin ! nay, touch not me 
With the fingers of blood ; begone ! " 

With a gesture of horror, he spurns the form 

That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm 

Ever thus the spirit must. 

Guilty in the sight of Heaven, 
With a keener woe be riven. 

For its weak and sinful trust 

In the strength of human dust ; 
And its anguish thrill afresh. 

For each vain reliance given 
To the failing arm of flesh. 



PART III 

Ah, weary Priest ! with pale hands pressed 

On thy throbbing brow of pain, 
Baffled in thy life-long quest. 

Overworn with toiling vain. 
How ill thy troubled musings fit 

The holy quiet of a breast 

With the Dove of Peace at rest, 
Sweetly brooding over it. 
Thoughts are thine which have no part 
With the meek and pure of heart, 
Undisturbed by outward things, 
Resting in the heavenly shade, 
By the overspreading wings 

Of the Blessed Spirit made. 
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong 
Sweep thy heated brain along. 
Fading hopes for whose success 

It were sin to breathe a prayer ; — - 
Schemes which Heaven may never bless, - 

Fears which darken to despair, 
Hoary priest ! thy dream is done 
Of a hundred red tribes won 

To the pale of Holy Church ; 
And the' heretic o'erthrown. 
And his name no longer known. 
And thy weary brethren turning. 
Joyful from their years of mourning 
'Twixt the altar and the porch. 
Hark ! what sudden sound is heard 

In the wood and in the sky. 
Shriller than the scream of bird. 

Than the trumpet's clang more high I 
Every wolf-cave of the hills. 

Forest arch and mountain gorge, 



504 



APPENDIX 



Rock and dell, and river verge, 
With an answering echo thrills. 
Well does the Jesuit know that cry, 
Which summons the Norridgewock to die, 
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh. 
He listens, and hears the rangers come. 
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum, 
And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot), 
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot. 
And taunt and menace, — answered well 
By the Indians' mocking cry and yell, — 
The bark of dogs, — the squaw's mad scream. 
The dash of paddles along the stream. 
The -whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves 
Of the maples around the church's eaves. 
And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown 
On -wigwam-log and tree and stone. 
Black with the grime of paint and dust. 

Spotted and streaked with human gore, 
A grim and naked liead is thrust 

Within tlie chapel-door. 
" Ha — Bomazeen ! In God's name say, 
What mean these sounds of bloody fray ? " 
Silent, the Indian points his hand 

To where across the echoing glen 
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band. 

And Moulton -with his men. 
" Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen ? 
Where are De RouviUe and Castine, 
And where the braves of Sawga's queen ? " 
" Let my father find the winter snow 
Which the sun drank up long moons ago ! 
Under the falls of Tacconoek, 
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock ; 
Castine with his wives lies closely hid 
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid ! 
On Sawga's banks the man of war 
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw ; 
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone, 

Struck by the knife of Sagamore John, 
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone." 

Fearfully over the Jesuit's face, 

Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace, 

Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase. 

One instant, his fingers grasp his knife, 

For a last vain struggle for cherished life, — 

The next, he hurls the blade away, 

And kneels at his altar's foot to pray ; 

Over his beads his fingers stray, 

And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud 

On the Virgin and her Son ; 

For terrible thoughts his memory crowd 

Of evil seen and done, 
Of scalps brought home by his savage flock 
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock 

In the Church's service won. 

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks. 

As scowling on the priest he looks : 

" Cowesass — cowesass — tawhieh wessa seen ? 

Let my father look upon Bomazeen, — 

My father's heart is the heart of a squaw. 

But mine is so hard that it does not thaw ; 

Let my father ask his God to make 

A dance and a feast for a great sagamore, 
When he paddles across the western lake, 



With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's 
shore. 
Cowesass — cowesass — tawhieh wessa seen ? 
Let my father die like Bomazeen 1 " 

Through the chapel's narrow doors. 

And through each window in the walls. 
Round the priest and warrior pours 

The deadly shower of English balls. 
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls ; 
While at his side the Norridgewock, 
With failing breath, essays to mock 
And menace yet the hated foe. 
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro 

Exultingly before their eyes, 
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow. 

Defiant still, he dies. 

" So fare all eaters of the frog ! 
Death to the Babylonish dog ! 

Down with the beast of Rome ! " 
With shouts Uke these, around the dead. 
Unconscious on his bloody bed. 

The rangers crowding come. 
Brave men ! the dead priest cannot hear 
The unfeeling taunt, — the brutal jeer ; 
Spurn — for he sees ye not — in wrath. 
The symbol of your Saviour's death ; 

Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal. 
And trample, as a thing accursed. 
The cross he cherished in the dust : 

The dead man cannot feel ! 

Brutal alike in deed and word. 

With callous heart and hand of strife. 
How like a fiend may man be made. 
Plying the foul and monstrous trade 

Whose harvest-field is human life. 
Whose sickle is the reeking sword ! 
Quenching, with reckless hand in blood. 
Sparks kindled by the breath of God ; 
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven. 

Of open guilt or secret sin. 
Before the bar of that pure Heaven 

The holy only enter in i 
Oh, by the widow's sore distress, 
The orphan's wailing wretchedness. 
By Virtue struggling in the accursed 
Embraces of polluting Lust, 
By the fell discord of the Pit, 
And the pained souls that people it. 
And by the blessed peace which fills 

The Paradise of God forever. 
Resting on all its holy hills. 

And flowing with its crystal river, - - 
Let Christian hands no longer bear 

In triumph on his crimson car 

The foul and idol god of war ; 
No more the purple wreaths prepare 
To bind amid his snaky hair ; 
Nor Christian bards his glories tell. 
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell. 

Tlirough the gun-smoke wreathing white. 
Glimpses on the soldier's sight 
A thing of human shape I ween. 
For a moment only seen, 



EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES 



505 



With its loose hair backward streaming, 
And its eyeballs madly gleaming, 
Shrieking, like a soul in pain. 

From tiie world of light and breath. 
Hurrying to its place again, 

JSpectre-like it vanisheth ! 

Wretched girl ! one eye alone 
Notes the way which thou hast gone. 
That great Eye, which slumbei-s never, 
Watching o'er a lost world ever, 
Tracks thee over vale and mountain. 
By the gushing forest-fountain, 
Plucking from the vine its fruit, 
Searching for the ground-nut's root, 
Peering in the she-wolfs den. 
Wading througli the marshy fen, 
Where the sluggish water-snake 
Basks beside the sunny brake, 
Coiling in his slimy bed, 
Smooth and cold against thy tread ; 
Purposeless, thy mazy way 
Threading through the lingering day, 
Anil at iiiglit securely sleeping 
Wlieri' till' (logwood's dews are weeping! 
Still, though earth and man discard thee, 
Dotli thy Heavenly Father guard thee : 
He who spared the guilty Cain, 

Even when a brothers blood, 

Ci-ying in the ear of God, 
Gave the earth its primal stain ; 
He whose mercy ever liveth, 
Who repenting guilt forgiveth, 
And tlie broken heart i-eceiveth ; 
Wanderer of the wilderness, 

Haunted, guilty, crazed and wild, 
He regardeth thy distress, 

And careth for His sinful child ! 



'Tis springtime on the eastern hills ! 
Like torrents gush the sunmier rills ; 
Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves 
The bladed grass revives and lives, 
Pushes the moiddering waste away, 
For glimpses to the April day. 
In kindly shower and sunshine bud 
The branches of the dull gray wood ; 
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks 
The blue eye of the violet looks ; 

The southwest wind is warmly blowing, 
And odors from the springing grass. 
The pine-tree and the sassafras. 

Are with it on its errands going. 

A band is marching through the wood 
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood ; 
The warriors of the wilderness, 
Painted, and in their battle dress ; 
And with them one whose bearded cheek. 
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak 

A wanderer from the shores of France. 
A few long locks of scattering snow 
Beneath a battered morion flow. 
And from the rivets of tlie vest 
Which girds in steel his ample 

The slanted sunbeams glance. 



In the harsh outlines of his face 
Passion and sin have left their ti-ace ; 
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair. 
No signs of weary age are there. 

His step is firm, his eye is keen. 
Nor yeai-s in broil and battle spent. 
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent 

The lordly frame of old Castine. 

No purpose now of strife and blood 

Urges the hoary veteran on : 
The fire of conquest and the mood 

Of chivalry have gone, 
A mournful task is his, — to lay 

Within the earth the bones of those 
Who perished in that fearful day. 
When Norridgewock became the prey 

Of all unsparing foes. 
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between, 
Of coming vengeance mused Castine, 
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen", 
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks 
Dig up their buried tomahawks 

For firm defence or swift attack ; 
And him whose friendship formed the tie 

Which held the stern self-exile back 
From lapsing into savagery ; 
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance 

Recalled a younger, happier day, 

And prompted memory's fond essay. 

To bridge the mighty waste which lay 

Between his wild home and that gray, 
Tall chateau of his native France : 
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din, 
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in, 
And counted with its solemn toll 
The masses for his father's soid. 

Hark ! from the foremost of the band 

Suddenly bursts the Indian yell ; 
For now on the very spot they stand 

Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell. 
No wigwam smoke is curling there ; 
The very earth is scorched and bare : 
And they pause and listen to catch a sound 

Of breathing life, — but there comes not one, 
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound ; 
But here and there, on the blackened ground. 

White bones are glistening in the sun. 
And where the house of prayer arose, 
And the holy hjonn, at daylight's close. 
And the aged priest stood up to bless 
The children of the wilderness. 
There is naught save ashes sodden and dank ; 

And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock, 

Tethered to tree and stump and rock 
Rotting along the river bank ! 

Blessed Mary ! who is she 
Leaning against that maple-tree ? 
The sun upon her face burns hot. 
But the fixed eyelid moveth not ; 
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear 
From the dry bough above her ear ; 
Dashing from rock and root its spray. 

Close at her feet the river rushes ; 

The blackbird's wing against her brushes. 



5o6 



APPENDIX 



And sweetly through the hazel-bushes 
The robin's mellow music gushes ; 
God save her ! will she sleep alway ? 

Castine hath bent him over the sleeper : 

" Wake, daughter, — wake ! " but she stirs 

no limb : 
The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim ; 
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper. 

Until the angel's oath is said, 
And the final blast of the trump goes forth 
To the graves of the sea and the graves of 
earth. 
Ruth Boniton is dead ! 



THE PAST AND COMING YEAR 

Wave of an awful torrent, thronging down. 
With all the wealth of centuries, and the cold 
Embraces of eternity, o'erstrown 
With the great wrecks of empire, and the old 
Magnificence of nations, who are gone ; 
Thy last, faint murmur — thy departing sigh. 
Along the shore of being, like a tone 
Thrilling on broken harp-strings, or the swell 
Of the chained winds' last whisper, hath gone 

by, 
And thou hast floated from the world of 

breath 
To the still guidance of o'ermastering Death, 
Thy pilot to eternity. Farewell ! 

Go, swell the thi-ongful past. Go, blend with 
all 
The garnered things of Death ; and bear with 

thee 
The treasures of thy pilgrimage, the tall 
And beautiful dreams of Hope, the ministry 
Of Love and high Ambition. Man remains 
To dream again as idly ; and the stains 
Of passion will be visible once more. 
The winged spirit will not be coidined 
By the experience of thy journey. Mind 
Will struggle in its prison-house, and still, 
With Earth's strong fetters binding it to iU, 
Unfurl the pinions fitted but to soar 
In that pure atmosphere, where spirits range — 
The home of high existences — where change 
And blighting may not enter. Love again 
Will bloom, a fickle flower, upon the grave 
Of old affections ; and Ambition wave 
His eagle-plume most proudly, for the rein 
Of Conscience will be loosened from the soul 
To give his purpose freedom. The control 
Of reason will be changeful, and the ties 
Which gather hearts together, and make up 
The romance of existence, will be rent : 
Yea, poison will be poured in Friendship's cup ; 
And for Earth's low familiar element. 
Even Love itself forsake its kindred skies. 

But not alone dark visions ! happier things 
Will float above existence, like the wings 
Of the starred bird of paradise ; and Love 
Will not be all a dream, or rather prove 
A dream — a sweet f orgetf ulness — that hath 



No wakeful changes, ending but in Death. 
Yea, pure hearts shall be pledged beneath the 

eyes 
Of the beholding heaven, and in the light 
Of the love-hallowed moon. The quiet Night 
Shall hear that language underneath the skies 
Wliich whisperetli above them, as the prayer 
And the deep vow are spoken. Passing fair 
And gifted creatures, with the light of truth 
And undebarred affection, as a crown. 
Resting upon the beautiful brow of youth, 
Shall smile on stately manhood, kneeling down 
Before them, as to Idols. Friendship's hand 
Shall clasp its brothers ; and Affection's tear 
Be sanctified with sympathy. The bier 
Of stricken love shall lose the fears, which 

Death 
Giveth his awful work, and earnest Faith 
Shall look beyond the shadow of the clay. 
The pulseless sepulclire, the cold decay ; 
And to the quiet of the spirit-land 
Follow the mourned and lovely. Gifted ones 
Lighting the Heaven of Intelleet, like suns. 
Shall wrestle well with circumstance, and bear 
The agony of scorn, the preying care. 
Wedded to burning bosoms ; and go down 
In sorrow to the noteless sepulchre, 
With one lone hope embracing like a crown 
The cold and death-like forehead of Despair, 
That after times shall treasure up their fame 
Even as a proud inheritance and high ; 
And beautiful beings love to breathe their name 
With the recorded things that never die. 

And thou, gray voyager to the breezeless sea 
Of infinite Oblivion — speed thou on ; 
Another gift of time succeedeth thee 
Fresh from the hand of God ; for thou hast done 
The errand of thy destiny ; and none 
May dream of thy I'eturning. Go, and bear 
Mortality's frail records to thy. cold. 
Eternal prison-bouse ; the midnight prayer 
Of suffering bosoms, and the fevered care 
Of worldly hearts ; the miser's dream of gold ; 
Ambition's grasp at greatness; the quenched 

light 
Of broken spirits ; the forgiven wrong 
And the abiding curse — ay, bear along 
These wrecks of thy own making. Lo, thy knell 
Gathers upon the windy breath of night. 
Its last and faintest echo. Fare thee well ! 



THE MISSIONARY 

" It is an awful, an arduous thing to root out 
every affection for earthly things, so as to live 
only for another world. I am now far, very 
far, from you all ; and as often as I look around 
and see the Indian scenery, I sigh to think of 
the distance which separates us." — Letters oj 
Henry Martyn, from India. 

" Say, whose is this fair picture, which the light 

From the unshutter'd window rests upon 
Even as a lingering halo ? Beautiful ! 



EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES 



507 



The keen, fine eye of manhood, and a Hp 
Lovely as tliat of Hyhis, and impressed 
Witli the brif^ht sigiiet of some brilliant thought ; 
That broad expanse of forehead, clear and high, 
^larked visibly with tlie characters of mind, 
And the free locks around it, raven black, 
Luxuriant and unsilver'd ! — who was he ? " 

A friend, a more than brother. In the spring 

And glory of his being he went forth 

From the embraces of devoted friends, 

From e:use and (iuiet happiness, from more — 

From the warm lieart that loved him with a love 

Holier than earthly passion, and to whom 

The beauty of his spirit shone above 

The charms of perishing nature. He went forth 

Strengthened to suffer, gifted to subdue 

The might of human passion, to pass on 

Quietly to the sacrifiee of all 

The lofty hopes of boyhood, and to turn 

The high ambition written on that brow. 

From its first dream of power and human fame, 

Unto a task of seeming lowliness. 

Yet God-like in its purpose. He went forth 

To bind the broken spirit, to pluck back 

The heathen from the wheel of Juggernaut ; 

To place the spiritual image of a God 

Holy and just and true, before the eye 

Of the dark-minded Bralimin, and unseal 

The holy pages of the Book of Life, 

Fraught with sublimer mysteries than all 

The sacred tomes of Vedas, to unbind 

The widow from her sacrifice, and save 

The perishing infant from the worshipped river ! 

" And, lady, where is he ? " He slumbers well 
Beneath the shadow of an Indian palm. 
There is no stone above his grave. The wind, 
Hot from the desert, as it stirs the leaves 
Heavy and long above him, sighs alone 
Over his place of slumber. 

" God forbid 
That he should die alone ! " Nay, not alone. 
His God w;is with him in that last dread hour ; 
His great arm underneath him, and His smile 
Melting into a spirit full of peace. 
And one kind friend, a human friend, was 

near — 
One whom his teachings and his earnest prayers 
Had snatch'd as from the burning. He alone 
Felt the List pressure of his faiUng hand, 
Caui^'^lit the last glimpse of his closing eye. 
And laid tin.' green turf over him with tears. 
And left huu wiih his God. 

" And was it well, 
Dear lady, that this noble mind should cast 
Its rich gifts on the waters ? That a heart 
Full of all gentleness and truth and love 
Should wither on the suicidal shrine 
Of a mistaken duty ? If I read 
Aright the fine intelligence which fills 
That amplitude of brow, and gazes out 
Like an indwelling spirit from that eye, 
He might have borne him loftily among 
The proudest of his laud, and with a step 



L^nfaltering ever, steadfast and secure, 
Gone up the paths of greati»ess, — bearing still 
A sister spirit with him, as some star. 
Preeminent in Heaven, leads steadily up 
A kindred watcher, with its fainter beams 
Bai)tized in its great glory. Was it well 
That all this promise of the heart and mind 
Shoidd perish from the earth, and leave no 

trace. 
Unfolding like the Cereus of the clime 
Which hath its sepulchre, but in the night 
Of pagan desolation — was it well ? " 

Thy will be done, Father ! — it was well. 
What are the honors of a perishmg woi-ld 
Grasp'd by a palsied finger ? the applause 
Of the unthoughtf ul multitude which greets 
The dull ear of decay ? the wealth that loads 
The bier with costly drapery, and shines 
In tinsel on the coffin, and builds up 
The cold -substantial monument ? Can these 
Bear up the sinking spirit in that hour 
When heart and flesh are failing, and the grave 
Is opening under us ? Oh, dearer then 
The memory of a. kind deed done to him 
Who was our enemy, one grateful tear 
In the meek eye of virtuous suffering, 
One smile call'd up by unseen charity 
On the -wan lips of hunger, or one praj'er 
Breathed from the bosom of the penitent — 
The staiu'd with crime and outcast, unto whom 
Our mild rebuke and tenderness of love 
A merciful God hath bless'd. 

" But, lady, say, 
Did he not sometimes almost sink beneath 
The burden of his toil, and turn aside 
To weep above his sacrifice, and cast 
A sorrowing glance upon his childhood's home, 
Still green in memory ? Clung not to his heart 
Something of earthly hope uncrucified, 
Of earthly thought unchastened ? Did he bring" 
Life's warm affections to the sacrifice — 
Its loves, hopes, sorrows — and become as one 
Knowing no kindred but a perishing world, 
No love but of the sin-endangered soul. 
No hope but of the winning back to life 
Of the dead nations, and no passing thought 
Save of the errand wherewith he was sent 
As to a martjT-dom ? " 

Nay, though the heart 
Be consecrated to the holiest work 
Vouchsafed to mortal effort, there will be 
Ties of the earth around it, and, through all 
Its perilous devotion, it must keep 
Its own humanity. And it is well. 
Else why wept He, who with our nature veiled 
The spirit of a God, o'er lost Jerusalem. 
And the cold grave of Lazarus ? And why 
In the dim garden rose his earnest prayer, 
That from his lips the cup of suffering 
Might pass, if it were possible ? 

My friend 
Was of a gentle nature, and his heart 
Gushed like a river-fountain of the hills, 



5o8 



APPENDIX 



Ceaseless and lavish, at a kindly smile, 
A word of welcome, or a tone of love. 
Freely his letters to his friends disclosed 
His yearnings for the quiet haunts of home, 
For love and its companionship, and all 
The blessings left behind him ; yet above 
Its sorrows and its clouds his spirit rose. 
Tearful and yet triumphant, taking hold 
Of the eternal promises of God, 
And steadfast in its faith. 

Here are some line 
Penned in his lonely mission-house and sent 
To a dear friend at home who even now 
Lingers above them with a mournful joy. 
Holding them well-nigh sacred as a leaf 
Plucked from the record of a breaking heart. 

EVENING IN BURMAH 

A night of wonder ! piled afar 
With ebon feet and crestsof snow, 

Like Himalaya's peaks, which bar 

The sunset and the sunset's star 

From half the shadowed vale below, 

Volumed and vast the dense clouds lie. 

And over them, and down the sky, 
Paled in the moon, the lightnings go. 

And what a strength of light and shade 

Is chequering all the earth below ! 
And, through the jungle's verdant braid. 
Of tangled vine and wild reed made, 

What blossoms in the moonlight glow ! 
The Indian rose's loveliness, 
The ceiba with its crimson dress. 

The twining myrtle dropped with snow. 

And flitting in the fragrant air. 

Or nestling in the shadowy trees, 
A thousand bright-hued birds are there — 
Strange plumage, quivering wild and rare. 

With every faintly breathing breeze ; 
And, wet with dew from roses shed. 
The bulbul droops her weary head. 
Forgetful of her melodies. 

Uprising from the orange-leaves, 
The tall pagoda's turrets glow ; 
O'er graceful shaft and fretted eaves. 
Its verdant web the myrtle weaves. 

And hangs in flowering wreaths below ; 
And where the clustered palms eclipse 
The moonbeams, from its marble lips 
The fountain's silver waters flow. 

Strange beauty fills the earth and air. 
The fi-agrant grove and flowering tree. 

And yet my thoughts are wandering where 

My native rocks lie bleak and bare, 
A weary way beyond the sea. 

The yearning spirit is not here ; 

It lingers on a spot more dear 

Than India's brightest bowers to me. 

Methinks I tread the well-known street — 
The tree my childhood loved is there, 



Its bare-worn roots are at my feet. 
And through its open boughs I meet 

White glimpses of the place of prayer ; 
And unforgotten eyes again 
Are glancing through the cottage pane, 

Than Asia's lustrous eyes more fair. 

Oh, holy haunts ! oh, childhood's home ! 

Where, now, my wandering heart, is thine 1 
Here, where the dusky heathen come 
To bow before the deaf and dumb. 

Dead idols of their own design ; 
Where in their worshipped river's tide 
The infant sinks, and on its side 

The widow's funeral altars shine ! 

Here, where, mid light and song and flowers, 

The priceless soul in ruin lies ; 
Lost, dead to all those better powers 
Which link this fallen world of ours 

To God's clear-shining Paradise ; 
And wrong and shame and hideous crime 
Are like the foliage of their clime. 

The unshorn growth of centuries ! 

Turn, then, my heart ; thy home is here ; 

No other now remains for thee : 
The smile of love, and friendship's tear, 
The tones that inelted on thine ear. 

The mutual thrill of sympathy. 
The welcome of the household band, 
The pressure of the lip and hand. 

Thou mayst not hear, nor feel, nor see. 

God of my spirit ! Thou, alone» 

Who watchest o'er my pillowed head. 
Whose ear is open to the moan 
And sorrowing of thy child, hast known 
The grief which at my heart has fed ; 
The struggle of my soul to rise 
Above its earth-born sympathies ; 
The tears of many a sleepless bed ! 

Oh ! be Thine arm, as it hath been. 
In every test of heart and faith, — 
The tempter's doubt, the wiles of men. 
The heathen's scoff, the bosom sin, — 

A helper and a stay beneath ; 
A strength in weakness, through the strife 
And anguish of my wasting life — 
My solace and my hope, in death ! 



MASSACHUSETTS 

Written on hearing that the Resolutions of 
the Legislature of Massachusettson the subject 
of Slavery, presented by Hon. C. Gushing to the 
House of Representatives of the United States 
[in 1837] had been laid on the table unread and 
iinref erred, under the infamous rule of " Pat- 
ton's Resolution." 

And have they spurned thy word. 
Thou of the old Thirteen ! 



POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER " 509 



^^^lose soil, where Freedom's blood first poured, 

Hath yet a darker green ? 
To outworn patience suffering long 
Is insult added to the wrong ? 

And have they closed thy mouth, 

And fixed the padlock f;ist ? 
Dumb as the black slave of the South ! 

Is this thy fate at last ? 
Oh shame ! thy honored seal and sign 
Trod under hoofs so asinine ! 

CaU from the Capitol 

Thy chosen ones again, 
Unmeet for them the base control 

Of Slavery's curbing rein ! 
Unmeet for men like them to feel 
The spurring of a rider's heel. 

When votes are things of trade 

And force is argument. 
Call back to Quincy's shade 

Thy old man eloquent. 
Why leave him longer striving thus 
With the wild beasts of Ephesus ! 

Back from the Capitol — 

It is no place for thee ! 
Beneath the arcli of Heaven's blue wall, 

Thy voice may still be free ! 
Wiat power shall chain thy utterance there, 
In God"s free sun and freer air? 

A voice is calling thee, 

From aU the martyr graves 
Of those stern men, in death made free, 

Who could not live as slaves. 
The slumberings of thy honored dead 
Are for thy sake disquieted. 

So let thy Faneuil Hall 

By freemen's feet be trod. 
And give the echoes of its wall 

Once more to Freedom's God ! 
And in the midst unseen shall stand 
Tile mighty fathers of thy laud. 

Thy gathered sons shall feel 

The soul of Adams near, 
And Otis with his fiery zeal, 

And Warren's onward cheer ; 
And heart to heart shall thrill as when 
They moved and spake as living men. 

Not on Potomac's side. 

With treason in thy rear. 
Can Freedom's holy cause be tried : 

Not there, my State, but here. . 
Here must thy needed work be done, 
The battle at thy hearth-stone won. 

Proclaim a new crusade 

Against the foes within ; 
From bar and pulpit, press and trade, 

Cast out the shame and sin. 
Then speak thy now-unheeded word, 
Its lightest whisper shall be heard. 



II. POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE 
OF WHITTIER" 

THE HOME-COMING OF THE BRIDE 

[The home of Sarah Greenleaf was upon the 
Newbury shore of the jNIerrimac, nearly oppo- 
site the home of the Whittiers. The house 
was standing until a recent date. Among Mr. 
Whittier's papei-s was found the following frag- 
ment of a ballad about the home-coming-, as 
a bride, of his grandmother, Sarah Greenleaf, 
now first published.] 

Sarah Greenleaf, of eighteen years. 

Stepped lightly her bridegroom's boat within, 
Waving mid-river, through smiles and tears, 

A farewell back to her kith and kin. 
^Vith her sweet blue eyes and her new gold gown. 

She sat by her stalwart lover's side — 
Oh, never Avas brought to Haverhill town 

By land or water so fair a bride. 
Glad as the glad autumnal weather. 

The Indian summer so soft and warm. 
They Avalked through the golden woods to- 
gether. 

His arm the girdle about her form. 

They passed the dam and the gray gristmill, 

Whose waUs with the jar of grinding shook, 
And crossed, for the moment awed and still. 

The haunted bridge of the Country Brook. 
The great oaks seemed on Job's Hill crown 

To wave in welcome their branches strong. 
And an upland streanilet came rippling do\vn 

Over root and rock, like a bridal song. 
And lo ! in the midst of a clearing stood 

The rough-built farmhouse, low and lone, 
While all about it the unhewn wood 

Seemed drawing closer to claim its own. 

But the red apples dropped from orchard trees. 
The red cock crowed on the low fence rail. 

From the garden hives came the sound of bees. 
On the barn floor pealed the smiting flail. 



THE SONG OF THE VERMONTERS, 1779 

[Written during school-days, and published 
anonymously in 1838. The secret of author- 
ship was not discovered for sixty years.] 

Ho — all to the borders ! Vermonters, come 

down. 
With your breeches of deerskin and jackets of 

brown ; 
With your red woollen caps, and your moccasins, 

come. 
To the gathering summons of trumpet and 

drum. 

Come down with your rifles ! Let graj' wolf 

and fox 
Howl on in the shade of their primitive rocks ; 



51° 



APPENDIX 



Let the bear feed securely from pig-pen and 

stall ; 
Here's two-legged game for yovir powder and 



On our south came the Dutchmen, enveloped in 

grease ; 
And arming for battle while canting of peace ; 
On our east, crafty Meshech has gathered his 

band 
To hang up our leaders and eat up our land. 

Ho — all to the rescue ! For Satan shall work 
No gain for his legions of Hampshire and York ! 
They claim our possessions — the pitiful 

knaves — 
The tribute we pay shall be prisons and graves ! 

Let Clinton and Ten Broek, with bribes in their 

hands, 
Still seek to divide and parcel our lands ; 
We 've coats for our traitors, whoever they are ; 
The warp is of feathers — the filling of tar : 

Does the " old Bay State " threaten ? Does 

Congress complain ? 
Swarms Hampshire in arms on our borders 

again ? 
Bark the war-dogs of Britain aloud on the 

lake — 
Let 'em come ; what they can they are welcome 

to take. 

Wliat seek they among us ? The pride of our 

wealth 
Is comfort, contentment, and labor, and health, 
And lands which, as Freemen, we only have 

trod. 
Independent of all, save the mercies of God. 

Yet we owe no allegiance, we bow to no throne. 
Our ruler is law, and the law is our own ; 
Our leaders themselves are our own fellow-men. 
Who can handle the sword, or the scythe, or the 
pen. 

Our wives are all true, and our daiighters are 

fair. 
With their blue eyes of smiles and their light 

flowing hair. 
All brisk at their wheels till the dark even-fall. 
Then blithe at the sleigh-ride, the husking, and 

ball! 

We 've sheep on the hillsides, we 've cows on 
the plain. 

And gay-tasselled corn-fields and rank-growing 
grain ; 

There are deer on the mountains, and wood- 
pigeons fly 

From the crack of our muskets, like clouds on 
the sky. 

And there 's fish in our streamlets and rivers 

which take 
Their course from the hiUs to our broad-bosomed 

lake; 



Through rock-arched Winooski the salmon leaps 

free. 
And the portly shad follows all fresh from the 

sea. 

Like a sunbeam the pickerel glides through the 

pool. 
And the spotted trout sleeps where the water 

is cool. 
Or darts from his shelter of rock and of root 
At the beaver's quick plunge, or the angler's 

pursuit. 

And ours are the mountains, which awfully rise, 
Till they rest their gi'een heads on the blue of 

the skies ; 
And ours are the forests unwasted, unshorn. 
Save where the wild path of the tempest is torn. 

And though savage and wild be this climate of 

ours. 
And brief be our season of fruits and of flowers, 
Far dearer the blast round our mountains which 

raves. 
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes 

over slaves ! 

Hurrah for Vermont ! For the land which we 

till 
Must have sons to defend her from valley and 

hill ; 
Leave the harvest to rot on the fields where it 

grows. 
And the reaping of wheat for the reaping of 

foes. 

From far Michiscom's wild valley, to where 
Foosoonsuck steals down from his wood-circled 

lair. 
From Shocticook River to Lutterlock town — 
Ho — all to the rescue ! Vermonters, come 

down ! 

Come York or come Hampshire, come traitors 

or knaves. 
If ye rule o'er our land, ye shall rule o'er our 

graves ; 
Our vow is recorded — our banner unfurled. 
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world ! 



TO A POETICAL TRTO IN THE CITY OF 
GOTHAM 

[This jeu cVesprit was written by AVhittier in 
1882. The notes are his own. The authorship 
was not discovered till after his death.] 

Three wise men of Gotliam 
Went to sea in a bowl. 

Bauds of the island city ! — where of old 

The Dutchman smoked beneath his favorite 
tree. 

And the wild eyes of Indian hunters rolled 
On Hudson plunging in tb^ Tappaan Zee, 

Scene of Stuy vesant's might and chivalry, 



POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER' 



511 



And Knickerbocker's fame, — I have made 
bold 
To come before ye, at the present time. 
And reason with ye in the way of rhyme. 

Time was when poets kept the quiet tenor 
Of their green pathway through th' Arcadian 
vale, — 
Chiming their music in the low sweet manner 
Of song-birds warbling to the " Soft South " 
gale; 
Wooing the Muse where gentle zephjTs fan her. 
Where all is peace and earth may not assail ; 
Telling of lutes and Howers, of love and fear, 
Of shei)herds, sheep and lambs, and "such small 
deer." 

But ye ! lost recreants — straying from the green 

And pleasant vista of your early time, 
With broken lutes and crownless skulls — are 
seen 
Spattering your neighbors with abhorrent 
slime 
Of the low world's pollution ! ^ Ye have been 
So long apostates from the Heaven of rhyme, 
That of the Muses, every mother's daughter 
Blushes to own such graceless bards e'er sought 
her. 

*' Hurrah for Jackson ! " is the music now 
Which your cracked lutes have learned alone 
to utter. 
As, crouching in Corruption's shadow low. 
Ye daily sweep them for your bread and but- 
ter,-2 
Cheered by the applauses of the friends who 
show 
Their heads above the offal of the gutter. 
And, like the trees which Orpheus moved at 

will, 
Eeel, as in token of your matchless skill ! 

Thou son of Scotia ! ^ — nursed beside the grave 
Of the proud peasant-minstrel, and to whom 

The wild muse of thy mountain-dwelling gave 
A portion of its spirit, — if the tomb 

Coidd burst its silence, o'er the Atlantic's wave. 
To thee his voice of stern rebuke would come. 

Who dared to waken with a master's hand 

The lyre of freedom in a fettered land. 

And thou ! — once treading firmly the proud 

deck • 
O'er which thy country's honored flag was 

sleei^ing, 
Calndy in j)eace, or to the hostile beck 

' Editors of the Mercnntile Advertiser and the Even- 
ing Post in New York, — the present organs of Jack- 
Bouisra. 

s Perhaps, after all, they get something better ; inas- 
much as the HproltPs)iave for some time had exclusive 
possession of the Hall of St. Tammany, and we have 
the authority of Halleck that 



s James Lawson, Esq., of the Mercantile. A fine, 



Of coming foes in starry splendor sweeping, — 
Thy graphic tales of battle or of wreck. 

Or lone night-watch in middle ocean keeping. 
Have made thy "Leisure Houi-s " more prized 

by far 
Than those now spent in Party's wordy war.'* 

And last, not least, thou! — now nurtured in 
the land 
Wliere thy bold-hearted fathers long ago 
Rocked Freedom's cradle, till its infant hand 

Strangled the serpent fierceness of its foe, — 

Thou, whose clear brow in early time was 

fanned 

By the soft airs which from Castalia flow ! * — 

Where art thou now ? feeding with hickory 

ladle 
The curs of Faction with thy daily twaddle ! 

Men have looked up to thee, as one to be 
A portion of our glory ; and the light 

And fairy hands of woman beckoned thee 
On to thy laurel guerdon ; and those bright 

And gifted spirits, whom the broad blue sea 
Hath shut from thy communion, bid thee, 
" Write,'" 

Like John of Patmos. Is all this forgotten. 

For Yankee bi-awls and Carolina cotton ? 

Are autumn's rainbow hues no longer seen ? 
Flows the "Green River" through its vale 
no more ? 
Steals not thy "Rivulet" by its banks of 
green ? 
Wheels upward from its dark and sedgy 
shore 
Thy "Water Fowl" no longer? — that the 
mean 
And vulgar strife, the ranting and the roar 
Extempore, like Bottom's should be thine, — 
Thou feeblest truck-horse in the Hero's line ! 

Lost trio ! — turn ye to the minstrel pride 
Of classic Britain. Even effeminate Moore 

Has cast the wine-cup and the lute aside 
For Erin and O'Connell ; and before 

His country's altar, Bulwer breasts the tide 
Of old oppression. Sadly brooding o'er 

The fate of heroes struggling to be free, 

Even Campbell speaks for Poland. Where are 
yef 

Hirelings of traitors ! — know ye not that men 
Are rousing up around ye to retrieve 

Our country's honor, which too long has been 
Debased by those for whom ye daily weave 

warm-hearted Scotchman, who, hnving unfortunately 
blundered into Jacksonisra, is wondering " how i' the 
Deil'sname " he got there. He is the anthor of a vol- 
ume entitled Tales and Sketches, and of the tragedy of 
Giordano. 

* William Leggett, Esq., of the Post, a gentleman of 
good talents, favorably known as the editor of the J\'ei« 
York Critic, etc. 

= William C. Bryant, Esq., well known to the public 
at large as a poet of acknowledged excellence ; and as 
a very dull editor to the people of New York. 



512 



APPENDIX 



Your web of fustian ; that from tongue and 
pen 
Of those who o'er our tarnished honor grieve, 
Of the pure-hearted and the gifted, come 
Hourly the tokens of your master's doom ? 

Turn from their ruin ! Dash your chains 
aside ! 
Stand up like men for Liberty and Law, 
And free opinion. Check Corruption's pride, 
Soothe the loud storm of fratricidal war, — 
And the bright honors of your eventide 
Shall share the glory which your morning 
saw; 
The patriot's heart shall gladden at your name. 
Ye shall be blessed with, and not " damned to 
fame " ! 



ALBUM VERSES 

[Written in the album of May Pillsbury of 
West Newbury, in the fall of ISoJS, when 
Whittier was at home on a visit from Phila- 
delphia, where he was engaged in editorial 
work.] 

Pardon a stranger hand that gives 

Its impress to these gilded leaves. 

As one who graves in idle mood 

An idler's name on rock or wood. 

So in a careless hour I claim 

A page to leave my humble name. 

Accept it ; and Avhen o'er my head 

A Pennsylvanian sky is spread, 

And but in dreams my eye looks back 

On broad and lovely Merrimae, 

And on my ear no longer breaks 

The murmuring music which it makes. 

When but in dreams I look again 

On Salisbury beach — Grasshopper plain — 

Or Powow stream — or Amesbury mills. 

Or old Crane neck, or Pipestave hills, 

Think of me then as one who keeps. 

Where Delaware's broad current sweeps. 

And down its rugged limestone-bed 

The Schuylkill's arrowy flight is sped. 

Deep in his heart the scenes which grace 

And glorify his " native place ; " 

Loves every spot to childhood dear. 

And leaves his heart " untraveled " here ; 

Longs, midst the Dutchman's kraut and greens. 

For pumpkin-pie and pork and beans. 

And sighs to think when, sweetly near. 

The soft piano greets his ear. 

That the fair hands which, small and white, 

Glance on its ivory polished light, 

Have ne'er an Indian pudding made, 

Nor fashioned rye and Indian bread. 

And oh ! whene'er his footsteps turn, 

Whatever stars above him burn. 

Though dwelling where a Yankee's name 

Is coupled with reproach or shame, 

Still true to his New England birth. 

Still faithful to his home and hearth. 

Even 'midst the scornful stranger band 

His boast shall be of Yankee Land. 



WHAT STATE STREET SAID TO SOUTH 
CAROLINA, AND WHAT SOUTH CARO- 
LINA SAID TO STATE STREET 

[Published in The National Era, May 22, 1851.] 

Muttering "fine upland staple," " prime Sea 
Island finer," 

With cotton bales pictured on either retina, 

" Your pardon ! " said State Street to South 
Carolina ; 

" We feel and acknowledge your laws are di- 
viner 

Than any promulgated by the thunders of 
Sinai ! 

Sorely pricked in the sensitive conscience of 
business 

We own and repent of our sins of remissness : 

Our honor we 've yielded, our words we have 
swallowed ; 

And quenching the lights which our forefathers 
followed, 

And turning from graves by their memories 
hallowed, 

With teeth on ball-cartridge, and finger on trig- 
ger. 

Reversed Boston Notions, and sent back a nig- 
ger!" 

" Get away ! " cried the Chivalry, busy a-drum- 

ming, 
And fifing and drilling, and such Quattle-bum- 

ming ; 
"With your April-fool slave hunt! Just wait 

till December 
Shall see your new Senator stalk through the 

Chamber, 
And Puritan heresy prove neither dumb nor 
Blind in that pestilent Anakim, Sumner ! " 



A FREMONT CAMPAIGN SONG 

Sound now the trumpet warningly ! 
The storm is rolling nearer. 
The hour is striking clearer, 
In the dusky dome of sky. 
If dark and wild the morning be, 
A darker morn before us 
Shall fling its shadows o'er us 
If we let the hour go by. 
Sound we then the trumpet chorus f 
Sound the onset wild and iiigh ! 
Country and Liberty ! 
Freedom and Victory ! 
These words shall be our cry, — 
Fremont and Victory ! 

Sound, sound the trumpet fearlessly t 
Each arm its vigor lending. 
Bravely with wrong contending. 
And shouting Freedom's cry ! 
The Kansas homes stand cheerlessly. 
The sky with flame is ruddy. 
The prairie turf is bloody. 

Where the brave and gentle die. 



POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER " 



513 



!Soiuk1 the trumpet stem and steady ! 
Sound the trumpet strong: and high ! 

Country and Liberty ! 

Freedom and Victory ! 
These words shall be our cry, — 

Fremont and Victory ! 

Sound now the trumpet clieerily ! 
Nor dream of Heaven's forsaking 
The issue of its making, 

That Ki-ht with Wrong must try. 
The fhiud that hung so drearily 
Tlie Xorthi'iii winds are breaking ; 
The Northern Lights are shaking 
Their tire-Hags in the sky. 
Sound tlie signal of awaking ; 
ISoiind the onset wild and high ! 
Country and Liberty ! 
Freedom and Victory ! 
These words shall be our cry, — 
Fremont and Victory ! 

THE QUAKERS ARE OUT 

[A campaign song written to be sung at a 
Republican Mass Meeting held in Newbury- 
port, Mass., October 11, 1800.] 

Not vainly we waited and counted the hours. 

The buds of our hope have all burst into t^o^\■ers. 

No room for misgiving — no loop - hole of 
doubt, — 

We 've heard from the Keystone ! The Qua- 
kers are out. 

The plot has exploded — we 've found out the 

trick ; 
The bribe goes a-begging ; the fusion won't 

stick. 
When the Wide-awake lanterns are shining 

about. 
The rogues stay at home, and the true men are 

out I 

The good State has broken the cords for her 

spun ; 
Her oil-springs and water won't fuse into one ; 
The Dutchman has seasoned with Fi-eedom his 

krout. 
And slow, late, but certain, the Quakers are 

out! 

Give the flags to the winds ! set the hiUs all 

aflame ! 
Make way for the man with the Patriarch's 

name ! 
Away with misgiving — away with all doubt, 
For Lincoln goes in, when the Quakers are out ! 



A LEGEND OF THE LAKE 

[This poem, originally printed in the " At- 
lantic Monthly,"' was withhekl from publica- 
tion in his volumes by Mr. Whittier, in defer- 
ence to living relatives of the hero of the poem. 
Death finally removed the restriction.] 



Should you go to Centre Harbor, 
As haply you some time maj', 

Sailing up the Winnepesaukee 
From the hills of Alton Bay, — 

Into the heart of the highlands, 

Into the north wind free, 
Tlirough the rising and vanishing islands. 

Over the mountain sea, — 

To the little handet lying 

White in its mountain fold, 
Asleep by the lake and dreaming 

A dream that is never told, — 

And in the Red Hill's shadow 
Your pilgrim home you make, 

Where the chambers open to sunrise, 
The mountains, and the lake, — 

If the pleasant picture wearies. 
As the fairest sometimes will, 

And the weight of the hills Ues on you 
And the water is aU too stiU, — 

If in vain tlie peaks of Gunstock 

Redden with sunrise lire. 
And the sky and the purple mountain? 

And the sunset islands tire, — 

If you turn from in-door thrumming 
And the clatter of bowls without. 

And the folly that goes on its travels, 
Bearing the city about, — 

And the cares you left behind you 
Come hunting along your track, 

As Blue-Cap in German fable 
Rode on the traveller's pack, — 

Let me tell you a tender storj' 

Of one who is now no more, 
A tale to haunt like a spirit 

The Winnepesaukee shore, — 

Of one who was brave and gentle. 

And strong for manly strife. 
Riding with cheering and music 

Into the tourney of life. 

Faltering and failing midway 
In the Tempter's subtle snare, 

The chains of an evil habit 
He bowed himself to bear. 

Over his fresh young manhood 
The bestial veil was flung, — 

The curse of the wine of Circe, 
The spell her weavers sung. 

Yearly did hill and lakeside 

Their summer idyls frame ; 
Alone in his darkened dwelling 

He hid his face for shame. 

The music of life's great marches 
Sounded for him in vain ; 



SH 



APPENDIX 



The voices of human duty 
Smote on his ear like pain. 

In vain over island and water 
The curtains of sunset swung ; 

In vain on the beautiful mountains 
The pictures of God were hung-. 

The wretched years crept onward, 

Each sadder than the last ; 
All the bloom of life fell from him, 

All the freshness and greenness past. 

But deep in his heart forever 

And unprofaned lie kept 
The love of his saintly mother, 

Who in the graveyard slept. 

His house had no pleasant pictures ; 

Its comfortless walls were bare : 
But the riches of earth and ocean 

Could not purchase his mother's chair. 

The old chair, quaintly carven. 
With oaken arms outspread, 

Whereby, in the long gone twilights, 
His childish prayers were said. 

For thence in his long night watches, 

By moon or starlight dim, 
A face full of love and pity 

And tenderness looked on him. 

And oft, as the grieving presence 

Sat in his mother's chair. 
The groan of his self -upbraiding 

Grew into wordless prayer. 

At last, in the moonless midnight. 
The summoning angel came. 

Severe in his pity, touching 

The house with fingers of flame. 

The red light flashed from its windows 
And flared from its sinking roof ; 

And baffled and awed before it 
The villagers stood aloof. 

They shrank from the falling rafters. 
They turned from the furnace glare ; 

But its tenant cried, " God help me ! 
I must save my mother's chair." 

Under the blazing portal. 

Over the floor of fire. 
He seemed, in the terrible splendor, 

A martyr on his pyre. 

In his face the mad flames smote him, 
And stung him on either side ; 

But he clung to the sacred relic, — 
By his mother's chair he died ! 

O mother, with human yearnings ! 

O saint, by the altar stairs ! 
Shall not the dear God give thee 

The child of thy many prayers ? 



O Christ ! by whom the loving. 
Though erring, are forgiven, 

Hast thou for liin; no I'efuge, 
No quiet place in heaven ? 

Give palms to thy strong martyrs, 
And crown thy saints with gold, 

But let the mother welcome 
Her lost one to thy fold ! 



LETTER TO LXJCY LARCOM 

25th 3d mo., 1866. 

Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real 

sorrow 
That I cannot take my carpet-bag and go tn 

town to-morrow ; 
But I'm "snow-bound," and cold on cold, 

like layers of an onion, 
Have piled my back and weighed me down as 

with the pack of Bvmyau. 
The north-east wind is damper and the north- 
west wind is colder. 
Or else the matter simply is that I am growing 

older. 
And then I dare not trust a moon seen over one's 

left shoulder, 
As I saw this with slender horns caught in a 

west hill-pine. 
As on a Stamboul minaret curves the arch-im- 
postor's sign, — 
So I must stay in Amesbury, and let j'ou go 

your way. 
And guess what colors greet your eyes, what 

shapes your steps delay ; 
What pictured forms of heathen lore, of god 

and goddess please you. 
What idol graven images you bend your wicked 

knees to. 
But why should I of evil dream, well knowing 

at your head goes 
That flower of Christian womanhood, oiii dear 

good Anna Meadows. 
She '11 be discreet, I 'm sure, although once, in 

a freak romantic. 
She flung the Doge's bridal ring, and married 

" The Atlantic " ! 
And spite of all appearances, like the woman in 

a shoe. 
She's got so many "Young Folks" now, she 

don't know what to do. 
But I must say I think it strange that thee and 

Mrs. Spaulding, 
Whose lives with Calvin's five-railed creed have 

been so tightly walled in. 
Should quit your Puritan homes, and take the 

pains to go 
So far, with malice aforethought, to " walk ia 

a vain show " ! 
Did Emmons hunt for pictures ? Was Jonathan 

Edwards peeping 
Into the chambers of imagery, with maids foi 

Tammuz weeping ? 
Ah well ! the times are sadlj changed and I 

myself am feeling 



POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER " 



515 



Tlie wicked world my Quaker coat from off my 

shoulders peeling. 
God j^raut that in the strange new sea of change 

wlifrciii we swim, 
We still may kiip the good old plank, of simple 

faith in llim ! 



LINES OX LEAVING APPLEDORE 

[Sent in a letter to Celia Thaxter.] 

ITndek the shadow of a clond, the light 
Died out up'on the waters, like a smile 
Cluised from a face by -grief. Following the 

flight 
Of a lone bird that, scudding with the breeze, 
Dipped its crank wing in leaden-colored seas, 
I saw in sunsliine lifted, clear and bright, 
On tho horizi>n's rim the Fortunate Isle 
That claiius tliee as its fair inhabitant. 
And glad of heai-t I whispered, " Be to her, 
Bird of the summer sea, my messenger ; 
Tt-U her, if Heaven a fervent prayer will grant, 
This light that falls her island home above 
Making its slopes of rock ajid greenness gay, 
A partial glory midst surrounding gray. 
Shall prove an earnest of our Father's love. 
More and more shining to the perfect day." 



MRS. CHOATE'S HOUSE-WARMING 

[" His Avasherwoman, Mrs. Choate, by indus- 
try and thrift had been enabled to build for 
her family a comfortable house. When it was 
ready for occupancy, there was a house-warm- 
ing-, attended by all the neighbors, who brought 
substantial tokens of their good-will, including 
all the furniture needed in her new parlor. 
Mr. Whittier's hand was to be seen in the 
whole movement ; he was present at the festiv- 
ity, and made a little speech, congratulating 
Mi-s. Choate upon her well-deserved success in 
life, and said he would read a piece of machine 
poetry which had been intrusted to him for the 
occasion. These are the lines, which were, of 
course, of his own composition." — S. T. Pick- 
AKD, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whit- 
tier.] 

Ok rights and of wrongs 
Let tlie feminine tongues 

Talk on — none forbid it. 
Our hostess best knew 
What her hands found to do, 

Asked no questions, but did IT. 

Here the lesson of work. 
Which so many "oiks shirk. 

Is so plain all may learn it ; 
Each brick in this dwelling. 
Each timber is telling, 

If you want a home, earn it. 



The question of labor 

Is solved by our neighbor. 

The old riddle guessed out : 
The wisdom sore needed. 
The truth long unheeded, 

Her tlat-iron 's pressed out ! 

Thanks, then, to Kate Choate ! 
Let the idle take note 

What their fingers were made for ; 
She, cheerful and jolly. 
Worked on late and early. 

And bought — what she paid for ! 

Never vainly repining. 
Nor begging, nor whining ; 

The morning-star twinkles 
On no heart that 's lighter 
As she makes the world whiter 

And smooths out its wrinkles. 

So, long life to Kate ! 
May her heirs have to wait 

Till they 're gray in attendance ; 
And her fiat-iron press on, 
Still teaching its lesson 

Of brave independence ! 



AN AUTOGRAPH 

[Written for an old friend. Rev. S. H. Em- 
ery, of Quincy, 111., who revisited Whittier in 

1868.] 

The years that since we met have flown 
Leave as they found me, still alone : 
No wife, nor child, nor grandchild dear, 
Are mine the heart of age to cheer. 
More favored thou, with hair less gray 
Than mine, canst let thy fancj' stray 
To where thy little Constance sees 
The prairie ripple in the breeze ; 
For one like her to lisp thy name 
Is better than the voice of fame. 



TO LUCY LARCOM 

3d mo., 1870. 



Pray give the " Atlantic " 
A brief un]iedantie 
Review of Miss Phelps' book, 
Which teaches and helps folk 
To deal with the offendei-s 
In love which surrenders 
All pride unforgiving. 
The lost one receiving 
With truthful believing 
That she like all others, 
Our sisters and brothers, 
Is only a sinner 
Whom God's love Avithin her 
Can change to the \yhiteness 
Of heaven's own brightness. 
For who shall see tarnish 
[f He sweep and garnish ? 



5^6 



APPENDIX 



When He is the cleanser 
Shall u-e dare to censure ? 
Say to Fields, if he ask of it, 
I can't take the task of it. 

P. S. — For myself, if I 'm able, 
And half comfortable, 
I shall run for the seashore 
To some place as before. 
Where blunt we at least find 
The teeth of the East wind, 
And spring does not tarry 
As it does at Aniesbury ; 
But where it will be to 
1 cannot yet see to. 



A FAREWELL 

[Written for Mr. and Mrs. Claflin as they 
were about to sail to Europe.] 

What shall I say, dear friends, to whom I owe 
The choicest blessing-s, drojjping from the hands 
Of trustful love and friendship, as you go 
Forth on your journey to those older lands, 
By saint and sage and bard and hero trod ? 
Scarcely the simple farewell of the Friends 
Sufficeth ; after you my full heart sends 
Such benediction as the pilgrim hears 
Where the Greek faith its golden dome uprears. 
From Crimea's roses to Archangel snows. 
The fittest prayer of parting : " Go with God ! " 



ON A FLY-LEAF OF LONGFELLOW'S 
POEMS 

[Written at the Asquam House in the sum- 
mer of 1882.] 

Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue 
Of him whose lyre the Muses strung ; 
His last low swan-song has been sung ! 

His last ! And ours, dear friend, is near ; 
As clouds that rake the mountains here, 
We too shall pass and disappear. 

Yet howsoever changed or tost, 
Not even a wreath of mist is lost, 
No atom can itself exhaust. 

So shall the soul's superior force 
Live on and run its endless course 
In God's unlimited universe. 

And we, whose brief reflections seem 

To fade like clouds from lake and stream. 

Shall brighten in a holier beam. 



SAMUEL E. SEWALL 

[An inscription for a marble bust, modelled 
by Anne Whitney, and placed in the Gary Li- 
brary, Lexington, Mass , May, 1884.] 



Like that ancestral judge who bore his name, 
Faithful to Freedom and to Truth, he gave. 

When all the air was hot with wrath and blame. 
His youth and manhood to the fettered slave. 

And never Woman in her suffering saw 
A helper tender, wise, and brave as he ; 

Lifting her burden of unrighteous law. 
He shamed the boasts of ancient chivalry. 

Noiseless as light that melts the darkness is, 
He wrought as duty led and honor bid, 

No trumpet heralds victories like his, — 
The unselfish worker in his work is hid. 



LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM 

[The album belonged to the grandson of 
Whittier's life-long friend, Theodore D. Weld, 
and the lines were written in April, 1' 84.] 

What shall I wish him ? Strength and health 
May be abused, and so may wealth. 
Even fame itself may come to be 
But wearying notoriety. 

'Wliat better can I ask than this ? — 
A life of brave unselfishness. 
Wisdom for council, eloqtience 
For Freedom's need, for Truth's defence, 
The championship of all that 's good. 
The manliest faitli in womanhood, 
Tlie steadfast friendship changing not 
'With change of time or jilace or lot. 
Hatred of sin, but not the less 
A heart of pitying tenderness 
And charity, that, suffering long. 
Shames the wrong-doer from his wrong : 
One wish expresses all — that he 
May even as his grandsire be ! 



A DAY'S JOURNEY 

[Written in 1886, for the tenth anniversary 
of the wedding of his niece.] 

Aftek your pleasant morning travel 

You pause as at a wayside inn. 
And take with grateful hearts your breakfast 

Though served in dishes all of tin. 

Then go, while years as hours are counted. 

Until the dial's hand at noon 
Invites you to a dinner table 

Garnished with silver fork and spoon. 

And when the vesper bell to supper 

Is calling, and the day is old. 
May love transmute the tin of morning 

And noonday's silver into gold. 

A FRAGMENT 

[Found among Mr. Whittier's papers, in his 
handwriting, but undated.] 



NOTES 



517 



The dreadful burden of our sins we feel. 

The pain of wounds which Thou alone canst 

heal, 
To whom our weakness is our strong appeal. 

From the black depths, the ashes, and the dross 
Of our ^vaste lives, we reach out to Thy cross, 
And by its fullness measure all our loss ! 

That holy sign reveals Thee : throned above 
No Moloch sits, no false, vindictive Jove — 
Thou art our Father, and Thy name is Love ! 1 



III. NOTES 

Page ."). Sole ri/thoness of Ancient Lynn. 

The Pytlioness of ancient Lynn was the re- 
doubtable Moll Pitclier, who lived under the 
shadow of High Rock in that town, and wjis 
sought far and wide for her supposed powers of 
divination. iShe died about ISIO. Mr. Upham, 
in his Salem Witchcraft, has given an account 
of her. 

Page 12. St. John. 

[Dr. Francis Parkman has given a detailed 
account of this e])isode in New England history 
in The Feudal Chief's of Acadia, published in 
The Atlantic Monthly, January, February, 189;3. 
The same series of incidents forms tlie basis of 
the romance by Mrs. Mary Hartwell Cather- 
wood, entitled The Lady of Fort St. John.] 

Page 21. The New Wife and the Old. 

[General Moulton's mansion may still be seen 
[1894] from the train, a hip-roofed house, stand- 
ing on the right-liand side of the track, just be- 
fore reachiu'^ the ILmipton station as one comes 
from Boston. Twi-nty-five years after writing 
the poem, Mr. Wliittier received a letter from 
a lady who had been spending a summer in the 
Moulton house, in which she said : " I remem- 
ber my mother's repeating to me her recollec- 
tions of the exorcising of the ghosts of General 
Moidton and his wife by a parson Milton or 
Bodily [the Rev. John Boddily, who died in 
1802, and is buried in a Newburyport burying- 
ground]. My grandfather Whipple being ab- 
sent, the servants (several of them had been 
slaves in Newport ) insisted that General Moul- 
ton and his wife (listuiLcd tlie house so much at 
night, he thumping with his cane, and herdress 
'a-rustling upand down the stairs,' that nothing 
could allay their terror ; and one Mrs. Williams, 
the housekeeper, persisted so strongly that she 
frequently saw them both, he in a snuff -colored 
suit and enormous wig, holding a gold-headed 
cane, tliat nothing could induce them to remain 
in the house. Many persons in the vicinity came 
to the exorcising, or laying the ghosts ' as they 
termed it. My mother said the scene was very 
impressive to her as a child, and she could never 



' This is an alternative reading which has been can- 
Celled : — 
" No lawless Terror dwells in light above, 
Cruel as Jloloch, deaf and false as Jove — 
Thou art our Father, and Thy name is Love ! " 



forget the white and black servants and neigh- 
boi-s, standing in solenm awe, and the abjuring 
of the minister. The servants, 1 believe, never 
afterwards complained of being disturbed or of 
seeing the ghosts, after this ceremony." 

In his work on The Supernaturalism of 
Neiv England, published in 1847, Mr. Whittier 
relates the legend of the ancient house. " Gen- 
eral Moulton's house was once burned in re- 
venge, it is said, by the fiend, whom the former 
had outwitted. He had agreed, it seems, to 
furnish the general with a boot full of gold and 
silver, poiu-ed annually down the chimney. The 
shrewd Yankee cut oft on one occasion the foot 
of the boot, and the Devil kept pouring down 
the coin from the chimney top, in a vain at- 
tempt to fill it, until the room was literally 
packed with the precious metal. When the 
general died, he was laid out, and put in a coffin 
as usual ; but on the day of the funeral it was 
whispered about that his body was missing, 
and the neighbors came to the charitable con- 
elusion that the enemy had got his own at 
last."] 

Page 26. Here the mighty Bashaba. 

Bashaba was the name which the Indians of 
New England gave to two or three of their prin- 
cipal chiefs, to whom all their inferior sagamores 
acknowledged allegiance. Passaeonaway seems 
to have been one of these chiefs. His residence 
was at Pennacook. (Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. 
pp. 21, 22.) "He was regarded," says Hub- 
bard, " as a great sorcerer, and his fame was 
widely spread. It was said of him that he could 
cause a green leaf to grow in winter, trees to 
dance, water to burn, etc. He was, undoubt- 
edly, one of those shrewd and powerful men 
whose achievements are always regarded by a 
barbarous people as the result of supernatural 
aid. The Indians gave to such the names of 
Powahs or Panisees." 

" The Panisees are men of great courage and 
wisdom, and to these the Devill appeareth more 
familiarly than to others." — Winslow's Rela- 
tion. 

Page 28. Thus o^er the heart of Weetamoo. 

" The Indians," says Roger Williams, " have 
a god whom they call Wetuomanit, who pre- 
sides over the household." 

Page 29. Drawn from that great stone vase. 

There are rocks in the river at the Falls of 
Amoskeag, in the cavities of which, tradition 
says, the Indians formerly stored and concealed 
their corn. 

Page ol. Aukeetamit. 

The Spring God. — See Roger Williams's Key 
to the Indian Language. 

Page 33. Mat wonck ktmna-monee. 

We shall see thee or her no more. — See 
Roger Williams's Key.. 

Page 33. Sowanna. 

"The Great South West God." —See Roger 
Williams's Observations, etc. 

Page 34. As we charged on Tilh/s line. 

The barbarities of Count De Tilly after the 
siege of Magdeburg made such an impression 
upon our forefathers that the phrase "like old 



5iJ 



APPENDIX 



Tilly " is still heard sometimes in New England 
of any piece of special ferocity. 

Page 42. AJire-mount in a frozen zone. 

Dr. Hooker, who accompanied Sir James 
Ross in his expedition of 1841, thus describes 
the appearance of that unknown land of frost 
and hre which was seen in latitude 77° south, 
— a stupendous chain of mountains, the whole 
mass of which, from its highest point to the 
ocean, was covered with everlasting snow and 
ice : — 

" The water and the sky were both as blue, 
or rather more intensely blue, than I have ever 
seen them in the tropics, and all the coast was 
one mass of dazzlingly beautiful peaks of snow, 
which, when the sun approached the horizon, re- 
flected the most brilliant tints of golden yellow 
and scarlet ; and then, to see the dark cloud of 
smoke, tinged with flame, rising from the vol- 
cano in a perfect unbroken colvimn, one side 
jet-black, the other giving back the colors of 
the sun, sometimes turning off at a right angle 
by some current of wind, and stretching many 
miles to leewai-d ! This was a sight so surpass- 
ing everything that can be imagined, and so 
heightened by the consciousness that we had 
Ijenetrated, under the guidance of our com- 
mander, into regions far beyond what was ever 
deemed practicable, that it caused a feeling of 
awe to steal over us at the consideration of our 
own comparative* insignificance and helpless- 
ness, and at the same time an indescribable 
feeling of the greatness of the Creator in the 
works of his hand." 

Page 59. Here is the place. 

[" The place Whittier had in mind was his 
birthplace. There were bee-hives on the gar- 
den terrace near the well-sweep, occupied per- 
haps by the descendants of Thomas Whittier's 
bees. The approach to the house from over 
the northern shoulder of Job's Hill by a path 
that was in constant use in his boyhood and 
still in existence, is accurately described in the 
poem. The ' gap in the old wall ' is still to be 
seen, and ' the stepping stones in the shallow 
brook ' are still in use. His sister's garden was 
down by the brook-side in front of the house, 
and her daffodils are perpetuated and may now 
be found in their season each year in that place. 
The red-barred gate, the poplars, the cattle 
yard with ' the white horns tossing above the 
wall,' were all part of Whittier's boy life on the 
old farm. Even the touch of ' the sundown's 
blaze on her window pane ' is realistic. The 
only place from which the blaze of the setting 
sun could be seen reflected in the windows of 
the old mansion is from the path so perfectly 
described. . . . All the story about Mary and 
her lover is wholly imaginative." S. T. PiCK- 
AKD in his Life and Letters of John Greenleaf 
Whittier. 

Page (J7. Of the fast which the good man life- 
long kept. 

It was the custom in Sewall's time for 
churches and individuals to hold fasts whenever 
any public or private need suggested the fitness ; 
and as state and church were very closely con- 



nected, the General Court sometimes ordered 
a fast. Out of this custom sprang tiie aimual 
fast in spring, now observed [1«8<S], but it is of 
comparatively recent date. Such a fast was or- 
dered on the 14th of January, 1();»7, whenSewall 
made his special confession of guilt in condemn- 
ing innocent persons under the supposition that 
they were witches. He is said to have observed 
the day privately on each annual return there- 
after. 

Page (j8. His burden of prophecy yet remains. 

[In point of fact the " old man wise and 
good," "propped on his staff of age," v/as 
forty-five years old when he uttered his pro- 
phecy.] 

Page 69. The Red River Voyageur. 

[The church of St. Boniface was burned in 
1860, the year after The Red River Voyageur 
was printed. The bells were broken in their 
fall, and the fragments were sent to London, 
recast by their original founder, and restored 
to their place in the new cathedral of St. Boni- 
face.] 

Page 77. Cobbler Keezar^s Vision. 
For a fuller account of Cobbler Keezar, see 



Wli 



littier's paper on The Border War of 1708 
his Prose Works, volume II. pp. 375, 376. Cob- 
bler Keezar was wont to pitch his tent on Po 
Hill and mend the foot-gear of the Amesbury 
people. The old towns of Amesbury and Salis- 
bury, within a few years consolidated, were 
divided by the Powow River. The falls de- 
scribed in the poem are concealed from view 
now by the factories and the arches which span 
the river.] 

Page 78. Or the stone of Dr. Dee. 

Dr. John Dee was a man of erudition, who 
had an extensive museum, library, and appara- 
tus ; he claimed to be an astrologer, and had 
acquired the reputation of having dealings with 
evil spirits, and a mob was raised which de- 
stroyed the greater part of his possessions. He 
professed to raise the dead and had a magic 
crystal. He died a pauper in 1608. 

Page 81. The Countess. 

[There is a slight inaccuracy in Whittier's 
head note to The Countess. According to Miss 
Rebecca I. Davis, Gleanings from the Valley of 
the Merrimac, where she gives her authorities, 
the marriage took place March 21, 1805. The 
Countess died January 5, 1807. Count Vipart 
returned to Guadaloupe whence he had come 
to this country at the time of the insurrection ; 
there he married again, and there he died and 
was buried, but his remains were afterward 
removed to the family tomb in Bordeaux, 
France. Mr. Matthew Whittier, the poet's 
only brother, married Abby, daughter of Jo- 
seph Roehemont de Poyen.] 

Page 103. The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 

[The following long note originally was used 
as an introduction to the poem.] The begin- 
ning of German emigration to America may be 
traced to the personal influence of William 
Penn, who in l677 visited the Continent, and 
made the acquaintance of an intelligent and 
highly cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics, 



NOTES 



5^9 



who, reviving in the seventeenth century the 
spiritual faith and worship of Tauler and the 
" Friends of God '' in the fourteenth, gathered 
ahout the piistor iSpener, and the young and 
beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In 
this circle originated the Frankfort Land Com- 
pany, wliich bouf;ht of William Penn, the Gov- 
ernor of Pfniisylvauia, a tract of land near the 
new city of rhiladi^lphia. 

The company's agent in the New World was 
a rising young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, 
son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at 
the age of seventeen, entered the University of 
Altorf. lie studied law at IStrasburg, Basle, 
and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Im- 
perial Government, obtained a practical know- 
ledge of international polity. Successful in all 
his examinations and disputations, he received 
the degree of Doctor of Law at Nuremberg in 
1676. In 1679 he was a law-lecturer at Frank- 
fort, where he became deeply interested in the 
teachings of Dr. iSpener. In 1680-81 he trav- 
elled in France, England, Ireland, and Italy 
with his friend Herr Von Rodeck. " I was," 
he says, ''glad to enjoy again the company of 
my Christian friends, rather than be with Von 
Rodeck, feasting and dancing." In 1683, in 
company with a small number of German 
Friends, he emigi-ated to America, settling 
upon tRe Frankfort Company's tract between 
the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers. The 
township was divided into four hamlets, namely, 
Germantown, KrLsheim, Crefield, and Sommer- 
hausen. Soon after his arrival he united him- 
self with the Society of Friends, and became 
one of its most able and devoted members, as 
well as the recognized head and lawgiver of the 
settlement. He married, two years after^ his 
arrival, Anneke (Anna), daughter of Dr. Klos- 
terman, of Muhlheim. 

In the year 1(JS8 he drew up a memorial 
against slaveholding, which was adopted by 
the Germantown Friends and sent up to the 
Monthly Meeting, and thence to the Yearly 
Meeting at Philadelphia. It is noteworthy as 
the first protest made by a religious body 
gainst Negro Slavery. The original document 
was discovered in 1844 by the Philadelphia an- 
tiquarian, Nathan Kite, and published in The 
Friend (Vol. XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold and 
direct appeal to the best instincts of the heart. 
"Have not," he asks, "these negroes as much 
right to fight for their freedom as you have to 
keep them slaves ? " 

Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the 
Germantown settlement grew and prospered. 
The inhabitants planted orchards and vine- 
yards, and surrounded themselves with souve- 
nirs of their old home. A large number of them 
were linen-weavers, as well as small farmers. 
The Quakei-s were the principal sect, but men 
of all religions were tolerated, and lived to- 
gether in harmony. In Iti'.t'J Richard Franie 
published, in what he called verse, a Descrip- 
tion of Pennsylvania, in which he alludes to the 
settlement : — 



" Tlie German town of wliich I spoke before, 
Wliioli is at least in length one mile or more, 
Where lives High German people aud Low Dutch, 
Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much, — 
There grows the flax, as also you may know 
That from the same they do divide the tow. 
Their trade suits well their habitation, 
We find convenience for their occupation." 

Pastorius seems to have been on intimate 
terms with William Penn, Thomas Lloyd, 
Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other 
leading men in the Province belonging to his 
own religious society, as also with Kelpius, the 
learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the 
pastor of the Swedes' church, aud the leaders 
of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of 
Pennsylvania, which was published at Frank 
fort and Leipsic in 1700 and I'tiH. His Lives oj 
the Saints, etc., written in German and dedi- 
cated to Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, 
was published in 1690. He left behind him 
many unpublished manuscripts covering a very 
wide range of subjects, most of which are now 
lost. One huge manuscript folio, entitled Hive 
Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or Eusca 
Apium, still remains, containing one thousand 

fages with about one hundred lines to a page, 
t is a medley of knowledge and fancy, history, 
philosophy, and poetry, written in seven lan- 
guages. A large portion of his poetry is de- 
voted to the pleasures of gardening, the descrip- 
tion of flowers, and the care of bees. The 
following specimen of his punning Latin is ad- 
dressed to an orchard-piKerer : — 

" Quisquis in hsec furtim reptas Tiridaria nostra 
Tangere fallaci poma caveto manu. 
Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omne quod opto, 
Cum malis nostris ut mala cuucta feras." 

Professor Oswald Seidensticker, to whose pa- 
pers in Der Deutsche Pioneer and that able 
Periodical The Penn Monthli/, of Philadelphia, 
am indebted foB manj' of the foregoing facts 
in regard to the German pilgrims of the New 
World, thus closes his notice of Pastorius : — 

" No tombstone, not even a record of burial, 
indicates where his remains have found their 
last resting-place, and the pardonable desire to 
associate the homage due to this distinguished 
nian with some visible memento cannot be grati- 
fied. There is no reason to suppose that he was 
interred in any other place than the Friends' 
old burying-ground in Germantown, though the 
fact is not attested by any definite source of in- 
formation. After all, this obliteration of the 
last trace of his earthly existence is but typical 
of what has overtaken the times which he rep- 
resents ; that Germantown which he founded, 
which saw him live and move, is at present but 
a quaint idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely 
remembered and little cared for by the keener 
race that has succeeded." 

The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked 
historian and poet, justice has been done to 
their faith, courage, and self-sacrifice and to 
the mighty influence of their endeavors to es- 
tablish righteousness on the earth. The Quaker 



520 



APPENDIX 



pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same ob- 
ject by different means, have not been equally 
fortunate. The power of their testimony for 
truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced 
only by what Milton calls "the unresistible 
might of meekness," has been felt through two 
centuries in the amelioration of penal severi- 
ties, the abolition of slavery, the reform of the 
erring, the relief of the poor and suffering, — 
felt, in brief, in every step of human progress. 
But of the men themselves, with the single ex- 
ception of William Penn, scarcely anything is 
known. Contrasted, from the outset, with the 
stern, aggressive Puritans of New England, 
they have come to be regarded as " a feeble 
folk," with a personality as doubtful as their 
unrecorded graves. They were not soldiers, 
like Miles Standish ; they had no figure so pic- 
turesque as Vane, no leader so rashly brave and 
haughty as Endicott. No Cotton Mather wrote 
their Magnalia ; they had no awful drama of 
supernaturaiism in which iSatan and his angels 
■were actors ; and the only witch mentioned in 
their simple annals was a poor old iSwedish 
woman, who, on complaint of her country- 
women, was tried and acquitted of everything 
but imbecihty and folly. Nothing but common- 
place offices of civility came to pass between 
them and the Indians ; indeed, their enemies 
taunted them with the fact that the savages 
did not regard them as Christians, but just 
such men as themselves. Yet it must be appar- 
ent to every careful observer of the progress 
of American civilization that its two principal 
currents had their sources in the entirely op- 
posite directions of the Puritan and Quaker 
colonies. To use the words of a late writer : i 
"The historical forces, with which no others 
may be compared in their influence on the peo- 
ple, have been those of the Puritan and the 
Quaker. The strength of the one was in the 
confession of an invisible Presence, a righteous, 
eternal Will, which would establish righteous- 
ness on earth ; and thence arose the conviction 
of a direct personal responsibility, which could 
be tempted by no eternal splendor and could be 
shaken by no internal agitation, and could not 
be evaded or transferred. The strength of the 
other was the witness in the human spirit to an 
eternal Word, an Inner Voice which spoke to 
each alone, while yet it spoke to every man ; a 
Light which each was to follow, and which yet 
was the light of the world ; and all other voices 
were silent before this, and the solitary path 
whither it led was more sacred than the worn 
ways of cathedral-aisles." 

It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader 
that, in the poem which follows, I have at- 
tempted nothing beyond a study of the life and 
times of the Pennsylvania colonist, — a simple 
picture of a noteworthy man and his locality. 
The colors of my sketch are all very sober, 
toned down to the quiet and dreamy atmos- 
phere through which its subject igj. visible. 
Whether, in the glare and tumult of the pres- 

1 Mulford's The Nation, pp. 267, 268. 



ent time, such a picture will find favor may 
well be questioned. I only know that it has 
beguiled for me some hours of weariness, and 
that, whatever may be its measure of public 
appreciation, it has been to me its own reward. 

Page 104. As once he heard in sweet Von 
Merluu's bowers. 

Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau, or, as Sewall 
the Quaker Historian gives it. Von Merlane, a 
noble young lady of Frankfort, seems to have 
held among the Mystics of that city very much 
such a position as Anna Maria ISchurmaus did 
among the Labadists of Holland. William 
Penn appears to have shared the admiration of 
her own immediate circle for this accomplished 
and gifted lady. 

Page 10(3. Or painful Kelpius from his her- 
mit den. 

Magister Johann Kelpius, a graduate of the 
University of Helmstadt, came to Pennsylvania 
in 1()94, with a company of German Mystics. 
They made their home in the woods on the 
W^issahickon, a little west of the Quaker settle- 
ment of Germantown. Kelpius was a believer 
in the near approach of the jNIillennium, and was 
a devout student of the Book of Revelation, 
and the Morgen-Bothe of Jacob Behmen. He 
called his settlement "The Woman in the 
Wilderness" (i)as Weib in der VVueste). He 
was only twentj'-four years of age when he 
came to America, but his gravity, learning, 
and devotion placed him at the head of the 
settlement. He disliked the Quakers, because 
he thought they were too exclusive in the mat- 
ter of ministers. He was, like most of the 
Mystics, opposed to the severe doctrinal views 
of Calvin and even Luther, declaring "that he 
could as little agree with the Damnamus of the 
Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema of 
the Council of Trent." 

He died in 1704, sitting in his little garden 
surrounded by his grieving disciples. Previous 
to his death it is said that he cast his famous 
"Stone of Wisdom" into the river, where 
that mystic souvenir of the times of Van Hel- 
mont, Paracelsus, and Agripija has Iain ever 
since, imdisturbed. 

Page lOv'. Or Slui/ter, saintly familist, whose 
word. 

Peter Sfuyter, or Schluter, a native of Wesel, 
united himself with the sect of Labadists, who 
believed in the Divine conmiission of John De 
Labadie, a Roman Catholic priest converted 
to Protestantism, enthusiastic, eloquent, and 
evidently sincere in his special calling and elec- 
tion to separate the true and living members of 
the Church of Christ from the formalism and 
hypocrisy of the ruling sects. George Keith and 
Robert Barclay visited him at Amsterdam, and 
afterward at the communities of Herford and 
Wieward ; and, according to Gerard Croes, found 
him so near to them on some i)()iuts. that they 
offered to take him into the Socictv of Friends. 
This offer, if it was really made, wliioh is cer- 
tainly doubtful, was, happily for the Friends at 
least, declined. Invited to Herford in AVest- 
phalia by Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector 



NOTES 



521 



Palatine, De Labadie and liis followers 
preaclied incessantlj', and succeeded in arousing 
a wild enthusiasm among the people, who neg- 
lected their business and gave way to excite- 
ments and strange practices. Men and women, 
it was said, at the Communion drank and danced 
together, and private marriages, or spiritual 
unions, were formed. Labadie died in 1()74 at 
Altona, in Denmark, maintaining his testimo- 
nies to the last. "Nothing remains for me," 
he said, " except to go to my God. Death is 
merely ascending from a lower and narrower 
chamber to one higher and holier." 

In KJT'.i, Peter iSluyter and Jasper Dankers 
were sent to America by the community at the 
Castle of Wieward. Their journal, translated 
from the 1 )iitch and edited by Henry C. Munihy, 
has been retently [l>i7'2] puljlished by the Long 
Island Historical Soeiety. They made some con- 
verts, and among them was the eldest son of Her- 
manns, the proprietor of a rich tract of land at 
the head of Chesapeake Bay, known as Bohemia 
Manor. tSluyter obtained a grant of this tract, 
and established upon it a community numbering 
at one time a hundred souls. Very contradic- 
tory statements are on record regarding his 
headship of this spiritual family, the discipline 
of which seems to have been of more than mo- 
n;istic severity. C(!rtain it is that he bought 
and sold slaves, and manifested more interest 
in the world's goods than became a believer in 
the near Millennium. He evinces in his jour- 
nal an overweening spiritual pride, and speaks 
contemptuously of other pi'ofessors, especially 
the Quakers whom he met in his travels. The 
latter, on the contrary, seem to have looked 
favorably upon the Labadists, and imiformly 
speak of them courteously and kindly. His 
journal shows him to have been destitute of 
common gratitude and Christian charity. He 
threw himself upon the generous hospitality of 
the Friends wherever he went, and repaid their 
kindness by the coarsest abuse and misrepre- 
sentation. 

Page 107. His long-disused and half-forgotten 
lore. 

Among the pioneer Friends were many men 
of learning and broad and liberal views. Penn 
was conversant with every department of liter- 
ature and philosophy. Thomas Lloyd was a 
ripe and rare scholar. The great Loganian 
Library of Philadelphia bears witv.ess to the 
varied learning and classical taste of its donor, 
James Logan. Thomas Story, member of the 
Council of State. Master of the Rolls and Com- 
missioner of Claims under ^Villiam Penn, and 
an able minister of his Society, took a deep 
interest in scientific questions, and in a letter to 
his friend Logan, written while on a religious 
visit to Great Britain, seems to have anticipated 
the conclusion of modern geologists. " I spent," 
he says, "some mouths, especially at Scarbor- 
ough, during the season attending meetings, at 
whose high clitfs and the variety of strata 
therein and their several positions I further 
learned and w;is confirmed in some things, — 
that the earth is of much older date as to the 



beginning of it than the time assigned in th« 
Holy Scriptures as conmionly understood, which 
is suited to the common capacities of mankind, 
as to six days of progressive work, by which i 
undei-stand certain long and competent periods 
of time, and not natural days." It was some- 
times made a matter of reproach by the Ana- 
baptists and other sects, that the Quakers 
read profane writings and philosophies, nd 
that they quoted heathen moralists in support 
of their views. Sluyter and Dankers, in their 
journal of American travels, visiting a Quaker 
preacher's house at Burlington, on the Dela- 
ware, found "a volume of Vir^^il lying on the 
window, as if it were a conniKiu hand-book; 
also Helmont's book on Medicine (Ortus Medi- 
cine, id est Initio, Physica inaudita jiroyressus 
medicince novus in morborum ultionam ad vitam 
longam), whom, in an introduction they have 
made to it, they make to jsass for one of their 
own sect, although in his lifetime he did not 
know anything about Quakers." It would 
appear from this that the half-mystical, half- 
scientific writings of the alchemist and philos- 
opher of Vilverde had not escaped the notice 
of Friends, and that they had included him 
in their broad eclecticism. 

Page 107. As still in B.emslcerck'' s Quaker 
Meeting, 

"The Quaker's Meeting," a painting by E. 
Hemskerek (supposed to be Egbert Hemskerck 
the younger, son of Egbert Hemskerck the 
old), in which William Penn and others — 
among them Charles II., or the Duke of York — 
are represented along with the rudest and most 
stolid class of the British rural population at 
that period. Hemskerck came to London 
from Holland with King William in 1689. He 
delighted in wild, grotesque subjects, such as 
the nocturnal intercourse of witches and the 
temptation of St. Anthony. Whatever was 
strange and uncommon attracted his free pencil. 
Judging from the portrait of Penn, he must have 
drawn his faces, figures, and costumes from 
life, although there may be something of carica- 
ture in the convulsed attitudes of two or three 
of the figures. 

Page 100. The Indian from his face washed 
all his war-paint off. 

In one of his letters addressed to German 
Friends, Pastorius says : " These wild men, who 
never in their life heard Christ's teachings 
about temperance and Cf)ntentment, herein far 
surpass the Christians. They live far more con- 
tented and unconcerned for the morrow. They 
do not overreach in trade. They know no- 
thing of our everlasting pomp and stylishness. 
They neither curse nor swear, are temperate in 
food and drink, and if any of them get drunk, 
the mouth - Christians are at fault, who, for 
the sake of accursed lucre, sell them strong 
drink." 

Again he wrote in 1008 to his father that he 
finds the Indians reasonable people, willing to 
accept good teaching and manners, evincing an 
inward piety toward God, and more eager, in 
fact, to understand things divine than many 



APPENDIX 



among those who in the pulpit teach Christ in 
word, but by ungodly life deny him. 

" It is evident," says Professor Seidensticker, 
"Pastorius holds up the Indian as Nature's 
unspoiled child to the eyes of the ' European 
Babel,' somewhat after the same manner in 
which Tacitus used the barbarian Germani to 
shame his degenerate countrymen." 

As believers in the universality of the Saving 
Light, the outlook of early Friends upon the 
heathen was a very cheerful and hopeful one. 
God was as near to them as to Jew or Anglo- 
Saxon ; as accessible at Timbuctoo as at Rome or 
Geneva. _ Not the letter of Scripture, but the 
.spirit which dictated it, was of saving efficacy. 
Robert Barclay is nowhere more powerful than 
in his argument for the salvation of the hea- 
then, who live according to their light, with- 
out knowing even the name of Christ. Wil- 
liam Penn thought Socrates as good a Chris- 
tian as Richard Baxter. Early Fathers of the 
Church, as Origen and Justin Martyr, held 
broader views on this point than modern Evan- 
gelicals. Even Augustine, from whom Calvin 
borrowed his theology, admits that he has no 
controversy with the admirable philosophers 
Plato and Plotinus. " Nor do I think," he says 
in De Civ- Dei, lib. xviii., cap. 47, "that the 
Jews dare affirm that none belonged unto God 
\ but the Israelites." 
■" Page 112. To-morrow shall bring another 
day. 

A common saying of Valdemar ; hence his 
sobriquet Alterdag. 

Page 117. The Witch of Wenham. 

[The house referred to in the head-note 
is that known as the old Prince house, near 
Oak Knoll, on the estate now owned by the 
Xaverian Brothers. In sending the poem to 
The Atlantic, where it was first published, 
Whittier wrote to the editor : "I do- not know 
how it may strike thee ; to me (who am no 
good judge) it seems one of my best."] 

Page 135. The Homestead. 

[In a letter written after the appearance of 
The Homestead., Whittier wrote: "I saw in 
the country several of these melancholy spec- 
tacles of atjandoned homes. I think the farm- 
ers of New England are better off as a class, on 
their hard soil, than those who are on the rich 
lands of the West. They are not rich, but they 
are not poor ; they live comfortably, and as a 
rule own their farms clear of mortgage. If they" 
were content to live and toil as the poorer farm- 
ers in the West do, they would double their 
deposits in the savings banks."] 

Page 138. And led by Him, nor man nor 
devils I fear. 

" He [Maey] shook the dust from off his feet, 
and departed with all his worldly goods and 
his family. He encountered a severe storm, 
and his wife, influenced by some omens of dis- 
aster, besought him to put back: He told her 
not to fear, for his faith was perfect. But she 
entreated him again. Then the spirit that 
impelled him broke forth : ' Woman, go below 
and seek thy God. I fear not the witches on 



earth, or the devils in hell 1 ' " — Life of Robert 
Pike, page 55. 

Page 142. The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood. 

The celebrated Captain Smith, after resign- 
ing the government of the Colony in Virginia, 
in his capacity of " Admiral of New England," 
made a careful survey of the coast from Penob- 
scot to Cape Cod, in the summer of 1614. 

Page 142._ The sweetest name in all his story. 

Captain Smith gave to the promontory, now 
called Cape Ann, the name of Tragabizanda, in 
memory of his young and beautiful mistress of 
that name, who, wliile he was a captive at Con- 
stantinople, like Desdemona, " loved him for 
the dangers he had passed." 

Page 153. The Old Burying-Ground . 

[This poem was written with a thought of 
the ancient cemetery at East Haverliill, near 
Rocks Village. " The entire piece," Whittier 
wrote to Lowell, " has now to me a deep and 
solemn significance. It was written in part 
while watching at the sick-bed of my dear mo- 
ther — now no longer with us. She passed away 
a few days ago, in the beautiful serenity of a 
Christian faith, a quiet and peaceful dismis- 
sal."] 

Page 155. The River Path. 

[To a friend who inquired as to the origin of 
this poem, Whittier wrote : " The poem was 
suggested by an evening on the Merrimac River 
in company with my dear sister, who is no 
longer with me, having crossed the river (as I 
fervently hope), to the glorified hill of God."] 

Page 157. The Vanishers. 

[This was the first poem written by Whittier 
after the death of his sister Elizabeth. In a 
letter to Mr. Fields he says: "If thee have 
read Schoolcraft thee will remember what he 
says of the Packwud-jinnies or ' little vanish- 
ers.' " The reference is to History, Condition 
and Prospects of the American Indians, pp. 122, 
123.] 

Page 160. I see the grayforfs broken tvall. 

[The place that was in the mind of the poet 
when he wrote, this stanza was on the rocks at 
Marblehead, where he had spent an early morn- 
ing more than forty years before.] 

Page 171. Over Sibmah\s vine. 

" vine of Sibmah ! I will weep for thee 
with the weeping of Jazer ! " Jeremiah, xlviii. 
32. 

Page 172. 

Even as the great Augustine 

Questioned earth and sea and sky. 
"Interrogavi Terram," etc. August. Soliloq. 
Cap. xxxi. 
Page 173. To a Friend. 

[The friend was Elizabeth Neall, afterward 
Mrs. Sydney Howard Gay.] 

Page 174. Lucy Hoo])er. 

[It was in the summer of 1837, while residing 
in New York, that Whittier made the acquain- 
tance of Lucy Hooper. She was a native of 
Essex County, and was at that time living 
with her parents in Brooklyn. Whittier en- 
couraged her literary ambition, for she had 
given promise of poetic excellence, and was con- 



NOTES 



523 



Biderinpr the advisability of publishing a volume. 
When Whittier shortly afterward was editing 
The Pennsylvania Freeman, he printed several 
of her i)oenis. Later in lS;i9 he was Avith her 
by the Merrimac one August afternoon.] 
Page liK). 

And the goodinan's voice., at strife 
With his shrill and tipsy wife. 

[AVhen Whittier first went to school with 
his sister Mary, the school-house was undergo- 
ing repairs, and the school was held in a dwell- 
ing house, the other part of which was occupied 
by a tipsy and quarrelsome couple.] 

Page lO'J. lloiiulii s front Oldbug hear. 

Dr. Withington, antlior i)f The Puritan, undar 
tlie name of Jonathan ()l(ll)Ug. 

Page 1112. The holy inon/c of Kempen spake. 

Thomas h Kempis in De Imitatione Christi. 

Page 196. When, years ago, beside the sum- 
mer sea. 

[In the great political contest of 1850, in Mas- 
sacliusetts, when the United iStates senatorship 
was in question, Whittier took an active part 
in forming the coalition between the Free toil- 
ers and the Democrats. He went to Phillips 
Beach, Swampscott, to see ISumner and induce 
him to accept tlie nomination.] 

Page "J-'t). I thiink you fur sweet summer days. 

[At one of the Laurel festivals the guests who 
had so often enjoyed the hospitality of Mr. and 
Mrs. Ashby presented them with an album con- 
taining photographs and other tokens of their 
appreciation. Upon the first page were written 
these lines by Whittier : — 

Dear Friends : — 

Accept this book whose pages hold 

The sun-traced shadows manifold 

Of friends, who 've known you long and well 

At city hearth, in sylvan dell, 

Enjoying under roof and tree 

Your liberal hospitality ; 

Who grateful own that while you gave 

Your life-long labor to the slave, 

(A labor crowned with more success 

Than hope could dream, or wisdom guess) 

You kept warm hearts, and opened wide 

Your windows on life's sunny side. 

Take, then, the volume with our thanks, 

And long upon your river banks 

When in azalea-gladdened woods 

The June sun swells the laurel buds, 

May we still meet as we have met. 

And larger make to you our debt.] 

Page 228. Hymn for the House of Worship at 
Georc/etown. 

[ Wliittier published the following card in the 
Boston Tr(ins<T/j)t. January 1^0, ISfiS: " In writ- 
ing the Hymn for the Memorial Church at 
Georgetown, the author, as his verses indicate, 
ha-s sole reference to the tribute of a brother 
and sister to the memory of a departed mother, 
— a tribute which seemed, and still seems to 
him in itself considered, very beautiful and ai>- 
propriate ; but he has since seen with surprise 
and sorrow a letter read at the dedication, im- 
posing certain extraordinary restrictions upon 
the society wliich is to occujiy the house. It is 
due to himself, as a simple act of justice, to say 



that had he known of the existence of that let 
ter previously, the Hymn would never have been 
written, nor his name in any way connected 
with the proceedings." The restrictions imposed 
were designed to prevent the use of the build- 
ing for any lecture or discussion on political 
subjects or other matters inconsistent with the 
preaching of the gospel. ] 

Page 24.3. Fie on the witch ! 

Goody Cole was brought before the Quarter 
Sessions in 1680 to answer to the charge of be- 
ing a witch. The court could not find satisfac- 
tory evidence of witchcraft, but so strong was 
the feeling against her tliat Major Waldron, 
the presiding magistrate, ordered her to be im- 
prisoned, with a " lock kept On her leg," at the 
pleasure of the Court. Li such judicial action 
one can read the fear and vindictive spirit of 
the community at large. 

Page 246. " Amen ! " said Father Bachiler. 

[Evidence found in favor of the Rev. Stephen 
Bachiler, an ancestor of the {)oet, after the 
poem was first printed, led Whittier to mod- 
ify lines which implied the guilt of the clergy- 
man.] 

Page 249, His Crimean camp-song hints to us. 

The reference is to Bayard Taylor's poem, 
The Song of the Camp. 

Page 258. The Palatine. 

[The legend on which this ballad is founded 
was told to Mr. Whittier by his friend, Joseph 
P. Hazard, of Newport, R. I., two years before 
the poem was written. About two years after 
it was published, he received a curious letter 
from Mr. Benjamin Corydon, of Napoli, N. Y., 
then in the ninety-second year of his age, who 
wrote : — 

" Tlie Palatine was a ship that was driven 
upon Block Island, in a storm, more than a 
hundred years ago. Her people had just got 
asliore, and were on their knees thanking God 
for saving them from drowning, when the Island- 
ers rushed upon them and murdered them all. 
That was a little more than the Almighty could 
stand, so he sent the Fire or Phantom Ship, to 
let them know He had not forgotten their wick- 
edness. She was seen once .a year on the same 
night of the year on which the murders occurred, 
as long as any of the wreckers were living ; out 
never after all were dead. I must have seen 
her eight or ten times — perhaps more — in ray 
early days. It is seventy years or more since 
.she was last seen. My father lived right oppo- 
site Block Island, on the mainland, so we had a 
fair view of her as she passed down by the island^ 
then she would disappear. She resembled a 
full-rigged ship, with her sails all set and all 
ablaze. It was the grandest sight I ever saw in 
all my life. I know of only two living who 
ever saw her, — Benjamin L. Knowles, of 
Rhode Island, now ninety-four years old, and 
myself, now in jny ninety-second year."] 

Page 262. Toussaint UOuverture. 

Tlie reader may, perhaps, call to mind the 
beautiful sonnet of William Wordsworth, ad- 
dressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during his 
confinement in France : — 



524 



APPENDIX 



Toussaint ! — thou most unhappy man of men ! 

Whether the whistling rustic tends his plougli 

Within thy hearing, or tliou liest now 
Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den ; 
O miserable chieftain ! — where and when 

Wilt thou find patience ? — Yet, die not, do thou 

Wear rather in tliy bonds a cheerful brow ; 
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 

Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and 
skies, — 
There 's not a breathing of the common wind 

Tliat will forget tliee ; thou hast great allies. 

Tliy friends are exultations, agonies. 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 

Page 282. And he, the basest of the base. 

The Northern author of the Congressional rule 
against receiving petitions of the people on the 
subject of Slavery. 

Page 289. 

So shalt thou deftly raise 

The market price of human flesh. 

There was at the time when this poem was 
written an Association in Liberty County, Geor- 
gia, for the religious instruction of negroes. One 
of tlieir annual reports contains an address by 
the Rev. Josiah Spry Law, in which the follow- 
ing passage occurs : " There is a growing inter- 
est in this community in the religious instruc- 
tion of Negroes. There is a conviction that re- 
ligious instruction promotes the quiet and order 
of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the 
owners." 

Page 293. The Pine-Tree . _ 

[Whittier wrote this poem immediately upon 
reading the proceedings of the convention. 
He enclosed it in the following note to Charles 
Sumner : " I have just read the proceedings of 
your Whig convention and the lines enclosed 
are a feeble expression of my feelings. I look 
upon the rejection of Stephen C. Phillips's reso- 
lutions as an evidence that the end and aim of 
the managers of the convention was to go just 
far enough to scare the party and no farther. 
All thanks for the free voices of thyself, Phillips, 
Allen, and Adams. Notwithstanding the result 
you have not spoken in vain. If thee thinks 
well enough of these verses, hand them to the 
Whig or Chronotype.''^] 

Page 298. / hear the Free-Wills singing. 
Tlie book-establishment of the Free-Will 
Baptists in Dover was refused the act of incor- 
poration by the New Hampshire Legislature, 
for the reason that the newspaper organ of that 
sect and its leading preachers favored abolition. 

Page 299, Our Belknap brother heard with 
aive. 

The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette 
all along manifested a peculiar horror of " nig- 
gers " and " nigger parties." 

Page 299. At Pittsfield, Reuben Leavitt saw. 

The justice before whom Elder Storrs was 
brought for preaching abolition on a writ drawn 
by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield. The sheriff 
served the writ while the elder was praying. 

Page 299. The schoolhouse, out of Canaan 
hauled. 

The academy at Canaan, N. H., received one 



or two colored scholars, and was in consequence 
dragged off into a swamp by Democratic teams. 
Page 299. 

What boots it that we pelted out 
The anti-slavery women. 
The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first 
meeting in Concord, was assailed with stones 
and brickbats. 
Page 299. 



For this did shifty Atherton 
Make gag rules for the grec 
" Papers and memorials touching the subject 



of slavery shall be laid on the table without 
reading, debate, or reference." So read the 
gag-law, as it was called, introduced into the 
House by Mr. Atherton. 

Page 315. 

The, fir St great triumph won 
In Freedom'' s name. 

The election of Charles Sumner to the United 
States Senate " followed hard upon " the rendi- 
tion of the fugitive Sims by the United States 
officials and the armed police of Boston. 

Page 332. To William H. Seward. 

["Tell Mr. Seward," Whittier wrote to A. 
Vf. Thayer, February 1, 18()1, " I have bound 
him to good behavior in my verse, and that if 
he yields the ground upon which the election 
was carried and consents to the further exten- 
sion of slavery he will compromise me, as well 
as the country and himself."] 

Page 350. Garrison. 

[Whittier's tribute to " Garrison " was pub- 
lished in the Independent, June 5, 1879, and 
was accompanied by the following letter to the 
editor : — 

"At the solemn and impressive funeral of my 
beloved and early friend, William Lloyd Gar- 
rison, one of the speakers read a part of the 
following poem, which I now send, asking a 
place for it in thy paper, although after the 
surpassingly beautiful tribute of Wendell Phil- 
lips, and the perhaps stiU more touchingly elo- 
quent words of Theodore D. Weld, it may 
seem almost superfluous. Something on my 
part seems due to the intimate friendship of 
more than fifty years, unbroken and undis- 
turbed by any differences of opinion and action 
during the long anti-slavery struggle."] 

Page 357. And beauty is its own excuse. 

For the idea of this line, I am indebted to 
Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to the Eho- 
dora, — 

If eyes were made for seeing. 

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. 



Page 400. 

No social smoke 
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

So isolated was the Whittier homestead that 
from the date of its erection to the present 
time no neighbor's roof has been in sight.] 

Page 401. Ah, brother ! only I and thou. 

[Matthew Franklin Whittier, born July 4, 
1812, died January 7, 1883. In middle life, diir- 
ing his residence in Portland, he took a deep in- 
terest in the anti-slavery movement, and wrote 



NOTES 



525 



a series of caustic letters under the signature 
Ethan Spike of Hornby.] 

Page 401. 

The African Chief was the title of a poem by 
Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, wife of the 
Hon. Perez Morton, a former attorney-general 
of Massachiisetts. Mrs. Morton's tiom de plume 
was Philenia. The school book in which The 
African Chief -was printed was Caleb Bingham's 
The American Preceptor, and the poem con- 
tained fifteen stanzas, of which the first four 
were as follows : — 

See how the black ship cleaves the main 
High-bounding o'er tlie violet wave, 

RemurmuriiiK witli the groans of pain, 
Deep freighted witli the princely slave. 

Did all the gods of Afric sleep, 

Forgetful of their guardian love, 
Wlien the white traitors of the deep 

Betrayed him in the palmy grove ? 

A chief of Gambia's golden shore. 
Whose arm the band of warriors led, 

Perhaps the lord of boundless power, 
By whom the foodless poor were ted. 



Does not the voice of reason cry, 

" Claim the first right which nature gave ; 

From tlie red scourge of bondage fly. 
Nor deign to live a burdened slave " ? 

Page 402. Or Chalfcley^s Journal old and 
quaint. 

Ohalldej''s own narrative of this incident, as 
given in his Journal, is as follows : " To stop 
their murmuring, I told them they should not 
need to cast lots, which was usual in such cases, 
which of us should die first, for I would freely 
offer up my life to do them good. One said, 
* God bless you ! I will not eat any of you.' 
Another said, ' He would die before he woidd 
eat any of me,' and so said several. I can 
truly say, on that occ;ision, at tliat time, m"y life 
was not dear to me, and that I was serious and 
ingenuous in my proposition : and as I was lean- 
ing over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully con- 
sidering my proposal to the company, and look- 
ing in my mind to Him that made me, a very 
large dolphin came up towards the top or sur- 
face of the water, and looked me in the face ; 
and I called the people to put a hook into the 
sea, and take him, for here is one come to re- 
deem me (I said to them). And they put £> 
hook into the sea, and the fish readily took it 
and they caught liim. He was longer than 
myself. I think he was about six feet long, 
and the largest that ever I saw. This plainly 
showed us that we ought not to distrust tliB 
providence of the Almighty. The people wera 
quieted by this act of Providence, and mur- 
mured no more. We caught enough to eat 
plentifully of, till we got into the capes of Dela- 
ware." 

Page 402. Our uncle, innocent of books, 

[For further account of Whittier's uncle 
Moses, the reader is referred to ^Vhittier's Prose 
Works, volume I. p. 323.] 



Page 403. There, too, our elder sister jdied. 

[Mary Wliittier, born September 3, 1806, 
married Jacob Caldwell of Haverhill, had two 
children, Lewis Henry and Mary Klizabeth, 
and died January?, 18()0.] 

Page 403. Our younqest and our dearest sat. 

[Elizabeth Hussey Whittier, born December 
7, 1815, was to her brother John what Doro- 
thy Wordsworth was to William. It was her 
brother's opinion that " had her health, sense of 
duty, and almost morbid dread of spiritual and 
intellectual egotism permitted, she might have 
taken a high place among lyrical singers." 
Some of lier poems are given in this volume. 
She died September 3, 1864.] 

Page 403. The master of the district school. 

[Until near the end of his life, Whittier was 
unable to recall the name of the schoolmaster 
who stood for this figure in Snow-Bound. At 
last he remembered his name as Haskell, and 
from this clue the person was traced. He was 
George Haskell from Waterford, Maine, a 
Dartmouth student, who studied medicine, 
and died in Viueland, New Jersey, in 1876.] 

Page 404. Another guest that winter night. 

[In his introductory note, Whittier adds 
somewhat to his characterization of Harriet 
Livermore. At the time when Snow-Bound 
was written he did not know that she was liv- 
ing, or he might not have introduced her. She 
died in 1867.] ^ 

Page 404. The crazy Queen of Lebanon. 

An interesting account of Lady Hester Stan- 
hope may be found in Kinglake's Eothen, chap, 
viii. 

Page 406. These Flemish pictures of old 
days. 

[In 1888 Whittier wrote the following lines 
on the fly-leaf of a copy of the firet edition of 
Snow-Bound : — 

Twenty years have taken flight 
Since these pages saw the light. 

All home loves are gone. 
But not all with sadness, still, 
Do the eyes of memory fill 

As I gaze thereon. 

Lone and weary life seemed when 
First these pictures of the pen 

Grew upon my page ; 
But I still have loving friends 
And tlie peace our Father sends 

Cheers the heart of age. 

Page 410. From the Bay State's graceful 
daughter. 

[The late Mrs. Jettie Morrill Wason, daugh- 
ter of the late Hon. George Morrill of Ames- 
bury. 

Page 4;38. O Beauty, old yet ever neiv. 
" Too late I loved Thee, Beauty of ancient 
days, yet ever new ! And lo ! Thou wert with- 
in, and I abroad searching for thee. Thou wert 
with me, but I was not with Thee." — August. 
Soli log.. Book X. 

Page 438. Who saiv the Darkness overflowed. 

" And I saw that there was an Ocean oJE Dark- 



526 



APPENDIX 



ness and Death : but an infinite Ocean of Li{i:ht 
and Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness : 
And in that I saw the infinite Love of God." 
— George Fox's Journal. 

Page 438. The Cry of a Lost Soul. 

Tiie story of the origin of this name, El alma 
perdida, is thus related by Lieut. Herndon. 
" An Indian and his wife went out from the vil- 
lage to work their chacra, carrying their in- 
fant with them. The woman went to the spring 
to get water, leaving the man in charge of the 
child, with many cautions to take good care of 
it. When she arrived at the spring, she found 
it dried up, and went further to look for an- 
other. The husband, alarmed at her long ab- 
sence, left the child and went in search. When 
they returned the' child was gone ; and to their 
repeated cries, as they wandered through the 
woods in search, they could get no response save 
the wailing cry of this little bird heard for the 
first time, whose notes their anxious and excited 
imagination syllabled into pa-pa^ ma-ma (the 
present Quichua name of the bird). I suppose 
the Spaniards heard this story, and with that 
religious poetic turn of thought which seems 
peculiar to this people, called the bird 'The 
Lost Soul.' " — Exploration of the Valley of the 
Amazon made under direction of the Navy De- 
partment. By William Lewis Herndon and 
Lardner Gibbon, Part I. p. 156. 

Page 464. The Light that is felt. 

[The origin of this iioem is explained in the 
following letter from Mrs. George A. Palmer, 
of Elmira, N. Y. — 

" When my oldest daughter was two and a 
half years old she knew Whittier's Barefoot 
Uoy by heart, thus: when I would repeat it to 
her the omission of a line would be instantly cor- 
rected, as one day she said to me, ' Mamma, 
you skipted out " apples of Cusperides." ' Once, 
in going ahead of me in a dark hall, she turned 
with sudden fear, and said, 'Mamma, take 
hold of my hand, so it will not be so dark.' 
This incident and the fact of her affection for 
Mr. Whittier's poetry was reported to him by 
a friend of tlie family. My surprise and delight 
were great when, in April, 1884, I received a 
kind letter from the poet and a manuscript 
copy of the poem, which was afterward pub- 
lished in the Christmas number of St. Nicho- 
las. In his letter Mr. Whittier said, "I am 
glad to have such a friend in thy little girl. 
Her good opinion of my verses is worth more 
to me than that of a learned reviewer. I send 
a rhymed paraphrase of her own beautiful 
thought."] 

Page 495. Mogg Megone. 

Mogg Megone, or Hegone, was a leader among 
the Saco Indians, in the bloody war of 1()77. 
He attacked and captured the garrison at Black 
Point, October l'2th of that year ; and cut off, 
at the same time, a party of Englishmen near 
Saco River. From a deed signed by this Indian 
in lfi64, and from other circumstances, it seems 
that, previous to tke war, he had mingled much 
with the colonists. On this account, he was 
probably selected by the principal sachems as 



their agent in the treaty signed in November, 
167(i. 

Page 495. ^Twas the gift of Castine to Mogg 
Megone. 

Baron de St. Castine came to Canada in 1644. 
Leaving his civilized companions, he plunged 
into tlie great wilderness, and settled among the 
Penobscot Indians, near the mouth of their no- 
ble river. He here took for his wives the daugh- 
ters of the great Modocawando, — the most poAv- 
erful sachem of the East. His castle was plun- 
dered by Governor Andros, during his reckless 
acbiiinistration ; and the enraged Baron is sup- 
posed to have excited the Lidians into open 
hostility to the English. 

Page 495. Grey Jocelyn''s eye is never sleeping. 

The owner and commander of the garrison at 
Black Point, which Mogg attacked and plun- 
dered. He was an old man at the period to 
which the tale i-elates. 

Page 495. Where Phillips'' men their watch are 
keeping. 

Major Phillips, one of the principal men of the 
Colony. His garrison sustained a long and ter- 
rible siege bj' the savages. As a magistrate and 
a gentleman, he exacted of his plebeian neigh- 
bors a remarkable degree of deference. The 
Court Records of the settlement inform us that 
an individual was fined for the heinous offence 
of saying that "Major PhiUips's mare was as 
lean as an Indian dog." 

Page 495. Steals Harmon down from the sands 
of York. 

Captain Harmon, of Georgeana, now York, 
was for many yeai-s the terror of the Eastern 
Indians. In one of his expeditions up the Ken- 
nebec River, at the head of a party of rangers, 
he discovered twenty of the savages asleep by 
a large fire. Cautiously creeping towards them 
until he was certain of his aim, he ordered his 
men to single out their objects. The first dis- 
charge killed or mortally wounded the whole 
number of the unconscious sleepers. 

Page 495. For vengeance left his vine-hung 
isle. 

Wood Island, near the mouth of the Saco. It 
was visited by the Sieur de Monts and Cham- 
plain, in 1603. The following extract, from the 
journal of the latter, relates to it : " Having left 
the Kennebec, we ran along the coast to the 
westward, and cast anchor under a small island, 
near the mainland, where we saw twenty or 
more natives. I here visited an island, beauti- 
fully clothed with a fine growth of forest trees, 
particularly of the oak and walnut ; and over 
spread with vines, that, in their season, produce 
excellent grapes. We named it the island of 
Bacchus." — Les Voyages de Sieur Champlain, 
liv. 2, c. 8. 

Page 495. The hunted outlaw, Bonython. 

John Bonython was the son of Richard Bony- 
thon, Gent., one of the most efficient and able 
magistrates of the Colony. John proved to be 
" a degenerate plant." In 1635, we find by the 
Court Records that, for some offence, he was 
fined 40s, In 1640, he was fined for abuse to- 
ward R. Gibson, the minister, and Mary, hia 



NOTES 



527 



wife. Soon after he was fined for disorderly 
conduct in the house of liis father. In lti-4."), the 
" Great and General Court adjudged John 13ony- 
thon outlawed, and incapable of any of his Maj- 
esty's laws, and i)roclaimed him a rebel." {Court 
Records of the I'rovince, M'A'k) In KmI, he bade 
defiance to the laws of Mitssacliusetts, and was 
a^aiu outlawed. He acted independently of 
all law and authority ; and hence, doubtless, 
his burlesque title of "the 8a{i:ainore of Saco," 
which has come down to the present generation 
in the following epitaph : — 

Here lies Boiiytlion, the Sagamore of Saco ; 
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went toHobo- 
moko. 

By some means or other, he ohtained a large 
estate. In this poem, I have taken some liber- 
ties with him, not strictly warranted by histor- 
ical facts, although the conduct imputed to him 
is in keeping with his general character. Over 
the last years of his life lingers a deep obscurity. 
Even the iiiaiiMc^r of his death is uncertain. He 
wassujiposi'd t(i luive been killed by the Indians ; 
but this is doubted by the able and indefatigable 
author of the History of Saco and li kldeford . — 
Part I. p. Ho. 

Page 490. From the leaping brook to the Saco 
River. 

Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or bog, 
called the " Heath," inJSaco, containing thirteen 
hundred acres. In this brook, and surrounded 
by wild and romantic scenery, is a beautiful 
waterfall, of more than sixty feet. 

Page i'M. Where zealous Hiacoomes stood. 

Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher on 
Martha's Vineyard ; for a biograjihy of whom 
the reader is referred to Increase Mayhew's ac- 
count of the Praying Indians, 17-!(;. The fol- 
lowing is related of him: "One Lord's day, 
after meeting, where Hiacoomes had been 
preaching, there came in a Powwaw very angry, 
and said, ' I know all the meeting Indians are 
liars. You say you don't care for the Paw- 
waws ; ' then calling two or three of them by 
name, he railed at them, and told them they 
were deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all 
the meeting Indians, if they set about it. But 
Hiacoomes told him that he would be in the 
midst of all the Powwaws in the island, and 
they should do the utmost they could against 
him; and when tliey should do their worst by 
their witeherat't to kill liiiu. he would without 
fear set himself ai^'^ainst them, by remembering 
Jehovah. He told them also he'did put all the 
Powwaws under his heel. tSuch was the faith 
of this good man. Nor were these Powwaws 
ever able to do these Christian Indians any hurt, 
though others were frequently hurt and killed 
by them." — Mayhew, pp. (i, 7, c. 1. 

Page 4i)7. Because she cries with an ache in 
her tooth. 

" The tooth-ache," says Roger Williams in 
his observations upon the language and customs 
of the New England tribes, " is the only paine 
which will force their stoute hearts to cry." He 
afterwards remarks that even the Indian women 



never cry as he has heard "some of their men 
in this paine." 

Page 4iKS. Wuttamuttata, "Let us drink." 
Wee/can, " It is sweet." Vide Roger Williams's 
Key to the Indian Languaije. "in that parte of 
America called New England." — London, 1643, 
p. ;i5. 

Page 498. Wetuomanit, — a house god, or 
demon. "They — the Indians — have given 
me the namee of thirty-seven gods which I have, 
all which in their solemiie Worships they invo- 
cate ! " — R. Williams's liriefe Observations of 
the Customs, ^fanners. \Vorshi])s, etc., of the Na- 
tives, in J'i(i<-t_(ui</ Warre, in Life and Death: 
on all whieii is added Spiritual Observations, 
General and Partitndar, of Chief e and Special 
use — upon all occasions — to all the English in- 
habiting these parts ; yet Pleasant and Profit- 
able to the view of all Mene : p. 110, e. 21. 

Page 499. Which niarks afar the desert isle. 

Mt. Desert Island, the Bald Mountain upoa 
which overlooks Frenchman's and Penobscot 
Bay. It was upon this island that the Jesuits 
made their earliest settlement. 

Page 500. Half trembling, as he seeks to look. 

Father Hennepin, a missionary among the 
Iroquois, mentions that the Indians believed 
him to be a conjurer, and that they were partic- 
ularly afraid of a bright silver chalice which he 
had in his possession. "The Indians," says 
P^re .Jerome Lallamant, "fear us as the great- 
est sorcerers on earth." 

Page .5(10. For Bomazeenfrom Tacconock. 

Bomazeen is spoken of by Penhallow as " the 
famous warrior and chieftain of Norridgewoek." 
He was killed in the attack of the English upon 
Norridgewoek, in 1724. 

Page 500. Like a shrouded ghost the Jesuit 
stands. 

P^re Ralle, or Rasles, was one of the most 
zealous and indefatigable of that band of Jesuit 
missionaries who at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century penetrated the forests of Amer- 
ica, with the avowed object of converting the 
heathen. The first religious mission of the Jes- 
uits to the savages in North America was in 
Kill. The zeal of the fathers for the conver- 
sion of the Indians to the Catholic faith knew 
no bounds. For this they plunged into the 
depths of the wilderness ; habituated them- 
selves to all the hardships and privations of the 
natives ; suffered cold, hunger, and some of 
them death itself, by the extremest tortures. 
P^re Brebeuf, after laboring in the cause of 
his mission for twenty years, together with his 
companion, P^re LaUamant, was burned alive. 
To these might be added the names of those 
Jesuits who were put to death by the Iroquois, 
— Daniel, Garnier, Buteaux, La Riborerde, 
Goupil, Constantin, and Liegeouis. "For 
bed," says Father Lallamant, in his Relation de 
ce qui s''est dans le pays des Hurons, 1(540, c. 3, 
" we have nothing but a miserable piece of bark 
of a tree ; for nourishment, a handful or two of 
corn, either roasted or soaked in water, which 
seldom satisfies our hunger ; and after all, not 
venturing to perform even the ceremonies of 



52S 



APPENDIX 



our religion without being considered as sorcer- 
ers." Their success among the natives, how- 
ever, by no means equalled their exertions. 
P^re Lallaniant says : " With respect to adult 
persons, in good health, there is little apparent 
success; on tlie contrary, there have been no- 
thing but storms and whirlwinds from that 
quarter." 

Sebastian Ralle established himself, some 
time about the year 1670, at Norridgewock, 
where he continued more than forty years. He 
was accused, and perhaps not without justice, 
of exciting his Praying Indians against the Eng- 
lish, whom he looked upon as the enemies not 
only of his king, but also of the Catholic reli- 
gion. He was killed by the English in 1724, at 
the foot of the cross which his own hands had 
planted. His Indian church was broken up, 
and its members either killed outright or dis- 
persed. 

In a letter written by Ralle to his nephew he 
gives the following account of his church and 
his own labors: "All my eonvei-ts repair to 
the church regularly twice every day : first, 
very early in the morning, to attend mass, and 
again in the evening, to assist in the prayers at 
sunset. As it is necessary to fix the imagina- 
tion of savages, whose attention is easily dis- 
tracted, I have composed prayers, calculated to 
inspire them with just sentiments of the august 
sacrifice of our altars : they chant, or at least 
recite them aloud, during mass. Besides 

f reaching to them on Sundays and saints' days, 
seldom let a working-day pass without mak- 
ing a concise exhortation, for the purpose of 
inspiring them with horror at those vices to 
which they are most addicted, or to confirm 
them in the practice of some particular virtue." 
— Vide Lettres Edifiantes et Cur., vol. vi. p. 
127. 

Page 503. Pale priest ! what proud and lofty 
dreams. 

The character of Ralle has probably never 
been correctly delineated. By his brethren of 
the Romish "Church, he has been nearly apo- 
theosized. On the other hand, our Puritan his- 
torians have represented liim as a demon in 
human form. He was undoubtedly sincere in 
his devotion to the interests of his church, and 
not over-scrupulous as to the means of advan- 
cing those interests. " The French," says the 
author of the History of Saco and Biddeford, 
" after the peace of 1713, secretly promised to 
supply the Indians with arms and ammunition, 
if they would renew hostilities. Their princi- 
pal agent was the celebrated Ralle, the French 
Jesuit." — p. 215. 

Page 504. Where are De Rouville and Cas- 
tine. 

Hertel de Rouville was an active and iinspar- 
ing enemy of the English. He was the leader 
of the combined French and Indian forces 
which destroyed Deerfield and massacred its 
inhabitants, in 1703. He was afterwards killed 
in the attack upon Haverhill. Tradition says 
that, on examining his dead body, his head 
and face were found to be perfectly smooth. 



without the slightest appearance of hair or 
beard. 

Page 504. _ Coicesassf — tawhich wessaseen? 
Are you afraid ? — why fear you ? 



IV. A LIST OF MR. WHITTIER'S 

POEMS 

ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY 

This list follows the dates given with the 
poems. In the few cases where the dates 
have not been determined exactly, the po- 
ems are placed in the group with which they 
were published when collected in volumes. 
The ordfer is by years, and no attempt has 
here been made to preserve the exact order 
of composition under the year. 



1825. 



1827. 
1828. 



1831. 
1832. 



The Exile's Departure. 

The Deity. 

The Vale of the Merrimac. 

Benevolence. 

Ocean. 

The Sicilian Vespers. 

The Earthquake. 

The Song of the Vermonters. 

The Spirit of the North. 

Judith at the Tent of Holofernes. 

Metaeom. 

The Drunkard to his Bottle. 

The Past and Coming Year. 

The Fair Quakeress. 

Bolivar. 

The Vaudois Teachef. 

The Star of Bethlehem. 

The Frost Spirit. 

Isabella of Austria. 

The Fratricide. 

The Cities of the Plain. 

Isabel. 

Stanzas : " Bind up thy tresses." 

To William Lloyd Garrison. 

To a Poetical Trio in the City of 
Gotham. 

The Female Martyr, 

The Missionary, 

The Call of the Christian, 

Extract from "A New England Le- 
gend." 

Toussaint L'Ouvertiire. 

Mogg Megone. 

The Crucifixion. 

Hymn : "0 Thou whose presence went ' 
before." 

The Slave-Ships. 

To the Memory of Charles B. Storrs. 

Expostulation 

A Lament. 

The Demon of the Study. 

The Yankee Girl. 

The Hunters of Men. 

Stanzas for the Times. 

The Prisoner for Debt. 

A Day. 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MR. WHITTIER'S POEMS 529 





Clerical Oppressoi-s. 


The Pine-Tree. 




A Suiiinious. 


Lines from a Letter to a Yomig Clerical 




To tlie Memory of Thomas Shipley. 


Friend. 




Tlie -Moral Warfare. 


To Ronge. 


1837. 


Massachusetts. 


Forgiveness. 




The Fountain. 


The Branded Hand. 




Palestine. 


The Reformer. 




Hymns from the French of Lamartine. 


To a Southern Statesman. 




Hymn : "0 Holy Father, just and 


Daniel Neall. 




true." 


A Letter supposed to be written by the 
Chairman of the Central Clique at 




Ritner. 




The Piustoral Letter. 


Concord, N. H. 




Lines on the Death of S. Oliver Torrey. 


The Freed Islands. 


1838. 


PentUfket. 


1847. The Lost Statesman. 




The Familist's Hymn. 


The Angels of Buena Vista. 




Pennsylvania Hall. 


Barclay of Ury. 




Album Verses. 


Yorktown. 




The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mo- 


To Delaware. 




ther. 


Song of Slaves in the Desert. 




The Quaker of the Olden Time. 


The Huskers. 


1839. 


The New Year. 


The Drovers. 




The Relic. 


Daniel ^\^leele^. 




The World's Convention. 


My Soul and I. 


1840. 


To , with a copy of Woolraan's 


To my Sister. 




Journal. 


The Wife of Manoah to her Husband. 


1841. 


The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon. 


The Angel of Patience. 




St. John. 


What the Voice said. 




The Exiles. 


A Dream of Sunmier. 




Funeral Tree of the Sokokis. 


My Thanks. 




The Norsemen. 


Randolph of Roanoke. 




Memories. 


Proem. 




The Merrimac. 


1848. The Slaves of Martinique. 




Lucy Hooper. 


The Curse of the Charter-Breakers, 




To a Friend. 


The Wish of To-Day. 




Leg^ett's Monument. 


Paean. 




Democracy. 


The Poor Voter on Election Day. 


1842. 


Follen. 


Tlie Crisis. 




The Gallows. 


The Reward. 




Raphael. 


The Holy Land. 


1843. 


The Knight of St. John. 


Worship. 




Ciissandra Southwick. 


The Peace Convention at Brussels. 




The New Wife and the Old. 


1849. Calef in Boston. 




Hampton Beach. 


To Pius IX. 




Ego.' 


On Receiving an Eagle's Quill from 




To J. P. 


Lake Superior. 




Chalkley HaU. 


Kathleen. 




Massachusetts to Virginia. 


Our State. 




The Christian Slave. 


To Fredrika Bremer. 




Seed-Time and Harvest. 


The Men of Old. 




To the Reformers of England. 


The Christian Tourists. 




The Human Sacrifice. 


The Lakeside. 


1844. 


The Pumpkin. 


Autumn Thoughts. 




The Bridal of Pennacook. 


The Legend of St. Mark. 




Ezekiel. 


1850. The Well of Loch Maree. 




Channing. 


Ichabod. 


_ 


To Mivssachusetts. 


In the Evil Day. 




The -Sentence of John L. Brown. 


Elliott. 




To Faneuil Hall. 


The Hill-Top. 




Texas. 


To Avis Keene. 


1845. 


New Hampshire. 


A Sabbath Scene. 




At Washington. 


Derne. 




To my Friend on the Death of his Sister. 


Lines on the Portrait of a Celebrated 




Gone. 


Publisher. 




The Shoemakers. 


All 's Well. 




The Fishermen. 


1851. Remembrance. 




The Lumbermen. 


The Chapel of the Hermits. 


184G. 


The Ship-Builders. 


The Prisoners of Naples. 



530 



APPENDIX 



To my Old Schoolmaster. 


The Palm-Tree. 


Invocation. 


From Perugia. 


Wordsworth. 


Le Marais du Cygne. 


In Peace. 


The Eve of Election. 


Kossuth. 


The Old Burying-Ground, 


To : Lines written after a Summer 


Triuitas. 


Day's Excursion. 


The Sisters. 


What State Street said. 


The Pipes at Lucknow. 


1852. Pictures. 
The Cross. 


The Swan Song of Parson Avery. 
Telling the Bees. 


First-Day Thoughts. 


A Song of Harvest. 


Questions of Life. 


George B. Cheever. 


April. 

The DisenthraUed. 


The Cable Hymn, 


1859, Kenoza Lake. 


The Peace of Europe. 


The Preacher. 


Eva. 


The Red River Voyageur. 


Astrsea. 


The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury 


1853. Tauler. 


"TheRoek"inElGhor. 


Summer by the Lakeside. 


In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge, 


Trust. 


The Over-Heart. 


My Namesake. 


My Psalm. 


The Dream of Pio Nono. 


The Memory of Burns. 


The Hero. 


Brown of Ossawatomie. 


Rantoul. 


On a Prayer-Book. 


Official Piety. 


The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall. 


1854. The Voices. 


For an Autumn Festival. 


Burns. 


1860. The Truce of Piscataqua. 

The Shadow and the Light. 


William Forster. 


Charles Sumner, 


My Playmate. 


The Rendition. 


The River Path. 


The Haschish. 


Italy. 


The Fruit Gift, 


Naples. 


Maud Muller. 


The Summons. 


The Hermit of the Thebaid. 


The Quaker Alumni. 


Letter from a Missionary of the Metho- 


The Quakers are out. 


dist Episcopal Church, South, 
The Kansas Emigrants. 


1861. To William H. Seward. 


Thy Will be done. 


A Memory. 


To John C. Fremont. 


1855. The Barefoot Boy. 


A Word for the Hour. 


My Dream. 


" Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." 


Flowers in Winter. 


Cobbler Keezar's Vision- 


Arisen at Last. 


Our River. 


For Righteousness' Sake. 


A Legend of the Lake. 


Inscription on a Siin-Dial, 


1862. Amy Wentworth. 


1856. The Ranger. 

The Mayflower, 


At Port Royal. 


The Cry of a Lost Soul. 


The Conquest of Finland. 


Mountain Pictures. 


The New Exodus. 


To Englishmen. 


A Lay of Old Time. 


The Watchers. 


A Song, inscribed to the Fremont Clubs. 


The Waiting. 


A Fremont Campaign Song. 


The Battle Autumn of 1862. 


What of the Day. 


Astrasa at the Capitol. 


A Song for the Time. 


1863. The Proclamation. 


The Pass of the Sierra. 


The Answer. 


The Panorama. 


To Samuel E. Sewall and Harriet W 


Burial of Barber. 


Sewall. _ 


To Pennsylvania, 


A Memorial. 


Mary Garvin. 


Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 


1857. Moloch in State Street. 


The Countess. 


The First Flowers. 


Barbara Frietchie. 


The Sycamores. 


Anniversary Poem. 


Mabel Martin, 


Hymn sung at Christmas by the Scholars 


Skipper Ireson'a Ride, 


of St. Helena's Island, S. C. 


The Garrison of Cape Ann. 
The Last Walk in Autumn. 


Mithridates at Chios. 


1864, The Vanishers. 


The Gift of Tritemius. 


What the Birds said. 


1858. To James T. Fields. 


The Brother of Mercy, 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MR. WHITTIER'S POEMS 531 



The Wreck of RivermoutL 




Hymn for the Opening of Plymouth 


Bryant on his Birthday. 




Church. 


Thomas JStarr Kiiif,'. 


1873. 


Conductor Bradley. 


Hymn for the Opening of Tliomas Starr 
King's House of Worship. 




John Underbill. 




A Mystery. 


Lines on Leaving Appledore. 




In Quest. 


1865. Revisited. 




The Friend's Burial, 


To the Thirty-ninth Congress. 




The Prayer of Agassiz. 


The Changeling. 




A Christmas Carmen. 


The Grave by the Lake. 


1874. 


Kinsman. 


Kalhindborg Cliureh. 




The Golden Wedding of Longwood. 


Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipa- 




Vesta. 


tion at Newburyport. 




A Sea Dream. 


Laiis Deo. 




Hazel Blossoms, 


The Mantle of St. John de Hatha. 




Summer. 


The Peace Autumn. 


1S75. 


" I was a Stranger and ye took me in.** 
The Two Angels. 


The Eternal Goodness, 




1806. Snow-Bound. 




The Healer. 


The Common Question. 




Child Songs. 


Our Master. 




Lexington. 


Abraham Davenport. 




The Library. 


Lines on a Fly-Leaf. 




A Farewell. 


The Maids of Attitash. 


1876. 


June on the Merrimac. 


The Dead Ship of HarpsweU. 




Sunset on the Bearcamp. 


Letter to Lucy Lareom. 




Centennial Hymn. 


1867. George L. Stearns. 


1877. 


Giving and Taking. 


The Woi'ship of Nature. 
Freedom in Brazil. 




Hymn of the Dunkers. 




The Henchman. 


The Palatine. 




In the " Old South." 


The Tent on the Beach. 




Red Riding-Hood. 


1868. The Hive at Gettysburg. 




The Witch of Wenham. 


Divine Compassion. 
The Clear Vision. 




The Problem. 




Thiers. 


The Meeting. 




Fitz-Greene Halleck. 


The Two Rabbins. 




King Solomon and the Ants. 


Among the Hills. 




In Response. 


The Dole of Jarl Thorkell. 




At School-Close. 


Hymn for the House of Worship at 


1878. 


The Seeking of the WaterfalL 


Geoi"getown. 




At Eventide. 


An Autograph. 
1869. Howard at Atlanta 




Oriental Maxims. 




The Vision of Echard. 


Garibaldi. 




William Francis Bartlett. 


Norunibega. 




Hymn of the Children. 


The Pageant. 


1879. 


The Khan's Devil. 


1870. Miriam. 




The Trailing Arbutus. 


In School-Days. 




The Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk. 


To Lydia Maria Child. 




Inscription on a Fountain. 


My Triumph. 




Our Autocrat. 


Nauhaught, the Deacon. 




Bayard Taylor. 


The Prayer-Seeker. 




The Emancipation Group. 


The Laurels. 




Garrison. 


A Spiritual Manifestation. 
To Lucy Lareom. 




The Landmarks. 


1880. 


My Trust. 


1871. The Sisters. 




The Lost Occasion. 


Marguerite. 




Voyage of the Jettie. 
A Name. 


The Robin. 




The Singer. 




The King's Missive. 


Disarmament. 




St. Martin's Summer. 


How Mary Grew. 




Valuation. 


Chicago. 




The Minister's Daughter. 


My Birthday. * 
1872. The Pressed Gentian. 




The Jubilee Singers. 


1881. 


Within the Gate. 


A Woman. 




The Book. 


The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 




Rabbi Ishmael. 


The Three Bells. 




Greeting. 


King Vobner and Elsie. 




The Rock Tomb of Bradore. 


The Brewing of Soma. 




Help. 



532 



APPENDIX 





Requirement. 




Banished from Massachusetts. 




Utterance, 




The Homestead. 




By their Works. 




Revelation. 




Tlie Word. 




The Bartholdi Statue. 




The Memory. 




Norumbega Hall. 


1882. 


The Bay of Seven Islands. 




Mulford. 




Garden. 




To a Cape Ann Schooner. 




An Autograph. 




Sanmel J. Tilden. 




An Easter Flower Gift. 




A Day's Journey. 




Godspeed. 

The Wishing Bridge 


1887. 


On the Big Horn, 






A Legacy. 




Storm on Lake Asquam. 


1888. 


The Brown Dwarf of Riigen. 




On a Fly-Leaf of Longfellow's Poems. 
At Last. 
A Greeting. 




LydiaH. Sigourney, Inscription on Tab- 
let. 
One of the Signers. 








The Poet and the Children. 




The Christmas of 1888. 




Wilson. 


1889. 


The Vow of Washington. 




The Mystic's Christmas. 




0. W. Holmes on his Eightieth Birth- 


1883. 


Our Country. 




day. 




St. Gregory's Guest. 


1890. 


R. S. S., At Deer Island on the Merri- 




How the Women went from Dover. 




niac. 




What the Travellei ?aid at Smiset. 




Burning Drift- Wood. 




A Summer Pilgrimage. 




The Captain's WeU. 




Winter Roses. 




Haverhill. 


1884. 


The Light that is Felt. 




To G. G. 




The Two Loves. 




Milton, on Memorial Window. 




The "Story of Ida." 




The Last Eve of Summer. 




Samuel E. Sewall. 




To E. C. S. 




Sweet Fern. 


1891. 


James Russell Lowell, 




Abram Morrison. 




Preston Powei-s, Inscription for Bass- 




Birehbrook Mill. 




Relief. 




Lines written in an Album. 




The Birthday Wreath. 


1885. 


Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj. 
The Two Elizabeths. 


1892. 


Between the Gates._ 
An Outdoor Reception. 




Requital. 




The Wind of March. 




The Wood Giant. 




To Oliver Wendell Holmes. 




The Reunion. 


[Date uiiknown.] The Home Coming of the 




Adjustment. 




Bride. 




An Artist of the Beautiful. 




Mrs. Choate's House- Warming. 




A Welcome to Lowell. 




A Fragment. 


1886. 


How the Robin came 







INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



A BEAUTIFUL aiul happy girl, 386. 

A bending staff I would not break, 432, 

A blusli as of roses, o'20. 

Above, below, in sky and sod, 436. 

Accept this book, whose pa<?es hold, 523. 

A Christian ! goinpr, gone, 280. 

A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw, 
165. 

Across the frozen marehes, 377. 

Across the sea I heard the groans, 381. 

Across the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's 
drouth and sand, 308. 

A dirge is waiUng from the Gulf of storm- 
vexed Mexico, 491. 

A drear and desolate shore, 127. 

A few brief years have passed away, 298. 

After your pleasant moi-ning travel, 516. 

Against the sunset's glowing wall, 425. 

Against the wooded hills it stands, 135. 

A gold fringe on the i)iiii)lini,' hem, Kil. 

All day the darkness and tlie cold. 144. 

All grim and soiled and brown with tan, 364. 

"All hail ! " the bells of Christmas rang, 462. 

All night above their rocky bed, 321. 

" All ready '? " cried the captain, 265. 

All things are Tliine : no gift have we, 232. 

Along Crane River's sunny slopes, 117. 

Along the aisle where prayer was made, 448. 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold, 84. 

Amidst these glorious works of Thuie, 227. 

Amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, 
134. 

Amidst thy sacred effigies, 349. 

Among their graven shapes to whom, 211. 

Among the legends sung or said, 130. 

Among the thousands who with hail and cheer, 
477. 

A moony breadth of virgin face, 310. 

And have they spurned thy word, 508. 

Andrew Kj'knian 's dead and gone, 439. 

"And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps 
tend, 212. 

A night of wonder ! piled afar, 508. 

Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 100. 

A noble life is in thy care, 4S1. 

A noteless stream, the Birchbrook runs, 133. 

Another hand is beckoning us, 178. 

A picture memory brings to me, 411. 

A pious magistrate ! sound his praise through- 
out, 315. 

Around Sebago's lonely lake, 11. 

As Adam did in Paradise, 219. 

As a guest who may not stay, 214. 

A score of years had come and gone, 115. 

A shallow stream, from fountains, 410. 

As Islam's Prophet, when liis last day drew, 
135. 



As o'er his furrowed fields which lie, 354. 
A sound as if from bells of silver, 158. 
A sound of tumult troubles all the air, 322. 
As they Avho, tossing midst the storm at night, 

304. 
As they who watch by sick-beds find relief, 

79. 
A strength Thy service cannot tire, 300. 
A strong and mighty Angel, 344. 
A tale for Roman guides to tell, 132. 
A tender child of summers three, 464. 
At morn I prayed, " I fain would see, 434. 
A track of moonhght on a quiet lake, 188. 

Bards of the island city ! — where of old, 510. 

Beams of noon, like burning lances, through 
the tree-tops flash and glisten, 305. 

Bearer of Freedom's holy light, 351. 

Bear him, comrades, to his grave, 319. 

Before my drift-wood fii-e I sit, 471. 

Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer, 462. 

Behind us at our evening meal, 443. 

Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real sor- 
row, 514. 

Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 114. 

Beneath the moonlight and the snow, 408. 

Beneath thy skies, November, 323. 

Beside a stricken field I stood, 335. 

Beside that milestone, where the level sun, 
409. 

Between the gates of birth and death, 476. 

Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one, 494. 

Bland as the morning breath of June, 143. 

Blessings on thee, little man, 396. 

Blest laud of Judsea ! thrice hallowed of song, 
419. 

Blossom and greenness, making all, 475, 

" Bring out your dead ! " The midnight street, 

" Build at Kallundborg by the sea, 255. 

But what avail inadequate words to reach, 461, 

By fire and cloud, across the desert sand, 377. 

Call him not heretic whose works attest, 460, 
Calm on the breast of Loch Maree, 39. 
Calmly the night came down, 487, 
Champion of those who gi-oan beneath, 262. 
Climbing a path which leads back never more, 

473. 
Close beside the meeting waters, 483. 
Conductor Bradley, (always may his name, 117. 

Dark the halls, and cold the feast, 21. 
Dead Petra in lier hill-tomb sleeps, 435. 
Dear Anna, when I brought her veil. 483. 
Dear friends, who read the world aright, 188. 
Dear Sister 1 while the wise and sage, 391. 



534 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task, 461. 
Dry the tears for holy Eva, 218. 

Earthly arms no more uphold him, 479. 
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hills, 17. 

Fair islands of the sunny sea ! midst all rejoi- 
cing things, 480. 

Fair Nature's priestesses ! to whom, 188. 

Far away in the twilight time, (31. 

Far from his close and noisome cell, 355. 

Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act, 
210. 

Father ! to thy sufFering poor, 422. 

Fold thy hands, thy work is over, 482. 

Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful ex- 
istence, 484. 

For ages on our river borders, 153. 

For the fairest maid in Hampton, 251. 

For weeks the clouds had raked the hUls, 85. 

Friend of mine ! whose lot was cast, 392. 

Friend of my many years, 415. 

Friend of my soul ! as with moist eye, 176. 

Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend of all, 
300. 

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, 167- 

From gold to gray, 378. 

From pain and peril, by land and main, 468. 

From purest wells of English undefiled, 473. 

From the green Amesbury hill which bears the 
name, 127. 

From the heart of Waumbek Methna, from 
the lake that never fails, 49. 

From the hills of home forth looking, far be- 
neath the tent-like span, 52. 

From these wild rocks I look to-day, 226. 

From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs 
of Maine, 220. 

From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still, 302. 

Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 460. 
"Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible 

day, 417. 
Gift from tlie cold and silent past, 9. 
God bless New Hampshire ! from her granite 

peaks, 293. 
God bless ye, brothers ! in the fight, 354. 
God called the nearest angels who dwell with 

Him above, 455. 
God's love and peace be with thee, where, 189, 
Gone before us, O our brother, 170. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 278. 
Gone hath the spring, with all its flowers, 144. 
Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest, 274. 
Graceful in name and in thyself, our river, 474. 
Gray searcher of the upper air, 490. 
" Great peace in Europe ! Order reigns, 373. 

HaU, heavenly gift ! within the human breast, 

485. 
Hail to Posterity, 103. 

Hands off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer ! play, 185. 
Happy young friends, sit by me, 136. 
Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth, 

216. 
Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee, 

451. 



Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain 

and glen, 270. 
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard, 364. 
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 

comes, 141. 
Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day, 462. 
He had bowed down to drunkenness, 374. 
He has done the work of a true man, 204. 
Here is the place ; right over the hiU, 59. 
He rests with the immortals ; his journey has 

been long, 481. 
Here, whUe the loom of Winter weaves, 395. 
Her fingers shame the ivory keys, 80. 
Her window opens to the bay, 250. 
He stood on the brow of the well-known hill, 

493. 
His laurels fresh from song and lay, 213. 
Ho — all to the borders ! Vermonters, come 

down, 509. 
Ho ! thou who seekest late and long, 290. 
Ho ! workers of the old time styled, 357. 
Hoot ! — daur ye sliaw ye're face again, 490. 
How bland and sweet the greeting of this 

breeze, 177. 
How has New England's romance fled, 5. 
How smiled the land of France, 173, 
How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 148. 
How sweetly come the holy psalms, 199. 
How sweetly on the wood-girt town, 8. 
Hurrah ! the seaward breezes, 358. 
Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue, 516. 

I ask not now for gold to gild, 431. 

I call the old time back : I bring my lay, 62. 

I did but dream. I never knew, 447. 

I do believe, and yet, in grief, 40. 

I do not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art 
most fair, 494. 

If I have seemed more prompt to censure 
wrong, 19(). 

I give thee joy ! — I know to thee, 201. 

I have been thinking of the victims bound, 
372. 

I have not felt, o'er seas of sand, 430. 

I heard the train's shrill whistle call, 315. 

I know not, Time and Space so intervene, 81. 

I love the old melodious lays, 1. 

Immortal Love, forever full, 443. 

I mourn no more my vanished years, 397. 

In calm and cool and silence, once again, 433. 

I need not ask thee, for my sake, 203. 

In my dream, methought I trod, 395. 

In sky and wave the white clouds swam, 253. 

In that black forest, where, when day is done, 
438. 

In the fair laud o'erwatched by Ischia's moun- 
tains, 199. 

In the minister's morning sermon, 459. 

In the old days (a custom laid aside, 259. 

In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame, 348. 

In the outskirts of the village, 56. 

In the solemn days of old, 371. 

In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw, 
205. 

In Westminster's royal halls, 306. 

I said I stood upon thy grave, 316. 

I shall not soon forget that sight, 387. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



535 



I sing the Pilgrim of a softer clime, 103. 

Is it the pahu, the cocoa-pahii, 155. 

I spread a scanty board too late, 412. 

Is this the land our fathers loved, 271 . 

Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear, 294. 

It chanced that while the pious troops of France, 

It is done, 345. 

Its windows flashing to the sky, 69. 

It was late in mild October, and the long autum- 
nal rain, 3(i;). 

I wait and watch ; before my eyes, 398. 

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made, 
l(i4. 

I would I were a painter, for the sake, 156. 

I would not sin, in tins half-playful strain, 242. 

I would the gift I offer here, 357. 

1 write my name as one, 413. 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying 

day, 201. 
Just God ! and these are they, 272. 

Know'st thou, slave-cursed land, 337. 

Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky, 

14.S. 
Last week — the Lord be praised for all His 

mercies, 31,S. 
Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, 258. 
" Let there be light ! " God spake of old, 233. 
Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's 

rusted shield, 293. 
Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and 

o'er all, 146. 
Like that ancestral judge who bore his name, 

516. 
Long since, a dream of heaven I had, 448. 
Look on him ! through his dungeon grate, 367. 
Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn, 467. 
Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine, 

217. 

Maddened by Eai-th's wrong and evil, 424. 

Maiden I with the fair brown tresses, 171. 

Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac, 
471. 

Maud Muller on a summer's day, 47. 

Men ! if manhood still ye claim, 292. 

Men of the North-Land ! where 's the manly 
spirit, 273. 

Men said at vespers : " All is well," 230. 

'Midst the men and things which will, 413. 

'Midst the palace bowel's of Hungary, imperial 
Presburg's pride, 492. 

Muttering "fine upland staple," prime Sea- 
island finer." 512. 

My ear is full of summer sounds, 332. 

My garden roses long ago, 2-iS. 

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been, 390. 

My lady walks her morning round, 122. 

My old Welsh neighbor over the way, 102. 

My thoughts are all in yonder town, 452. 

Nanhaught, the Indian deacon, who of old, 99. 
'Neath skies that winter never knew. 23.{. 
Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day, 103. 



Night on the city of the Moor, 311. 

Night was down among the mountains, 488. 

No aimless wanderei-s, by the fiend Unrest, 368. 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 232, 

No bird-song floated down the hill, 155. 

No more these simple flowei-s belong, 196. 

Not always as the whirlwind's rush, 417. 

Not as a poor requital of the joy, 177. 

Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires, 239. 

Not unto us who did but seek, 341). 

Not vainly did old poets tell, 180. 

Not vainly we waited and counted the hours, 513. 

Not without envy Wealth at times must look, 

3S2. 
Not with the splendors of the days of old, 279. 
Now, joy and thanks forevermore, 308. 

Ary Seheffer ! when beneath thine eye, 331. 

Christ of God ! whose life and death, 454. 

dearest bloom the seasons know, 462. 

dearly loved, 182. 

O dwellers in the stately towns, 226. 

O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands, 
150. 

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, 316. 

Of all the rides since the birth of time, 55. 

O friends ! with whom my feet have trod, 442. 

Of rights and of wrongs, 515. 

Oh, dwarfed and v.ronged, and stained with ill, 
450. 

" Oh, for a knight like Bayard, 192. 

Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, 
390. 

Oh, none in all the world before. 340. 

O Holy Father ! just and true, 278. 

Oh, praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come, 338. 

Oh, tliicker, deeper, darker growing, 202. 

Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn, 211. 

" Lady fair, these silks of mine are beauti- 
ful and rare, 3. 

Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down, 190. 

Olor Iscanus qiieries: " Why should we, 333. 

O lonely bay of Trinity, 256. 

Mother Earth ! upon thy lap, 303. 

O Mother State ! the winds of March, 208. 

Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath, 341. 

Once more, O all-adjusting Death, 217. 

Once more, Mountains of the North, unveil, 
156. 

Once more on yonder laurelled heieht, 224. 

One day, along the electric wire, 193. 

One hymn more, my lyre, 420. 

One morning of the first sad Fall, 218. 

One Sabbath day my friend and I, 94, 

Norah, lay your basket down, 37. 

On page of thine I cannot trace, 388. 

On the isle of Penikese, 450. 

On these green banks, where falls too soon, 47(X 

On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, 408. 

O Painter of the fruits and flowers, 237. 

O i)eople-chosen ! are ye not, 347. 

O Poet rare and old, 373. 

O river winding to the sea, 473. 

() 8tate prayer-founded ! never hung, 320. 

storied vale of Merrimac, 240. 

O strong, upwelling prayei-s of faith, 45. 

O Thou, whose presence went before, 268. 



536 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Onr fathers' God ! from out whose hand, 234. 
Onr fellow-countrymen in chains, 267. 
Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, 153. 
Out and in the river is winding, 09. 
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one, 

23.S. 
Out from Jerusalem, 120. 
Over the threshold of his pleasant home, 137. 
Over the wooded northern ridge, 82. 

Pardon a stranger hand that gives, 512. 
Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare, 439. 
Piero Luea, known of all the town, 250. 
Pipes of the misty moorlands, 58. 
Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass, 467. 
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play, 409. 
Pray give the " Atlantic," 515. 
"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ 
once more, 382. 

Raze these long blocks of brick and stone, 74. 
Red as the banner which enshrouds, 488. 
Right in the track where Sherman, 348. 
Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, 245. 
Robert Rawlin 1 — Frosts were falling, 51. 

Sad Mayflower 1 watched by winter stars, 149. 

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds. 
340. 

Sarah Greenleaf, of eighteen years, 509. 

Say, whose is this fair picture, which the light, 
506. 

Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell, 312. 

Seeress of the misty Norland, 1>S3. 

She came and stood in the Old South Church, 
121. 

She sang alone, ere womanhood had known, 
475. 

She sings by her wheel at that low cottage- 
door, 269. 

She was a fair young girl, yet on her brow, 491. 

Should you go to Centre Harbor, 513. 

Silence o'er sea and earth, 486. 

Smoothing soft the nestling head, 464. 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn, 186. 

Some die too late and some too soon, 187. 

So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame, 198. 

So stood of old the holy Christ, 454. 

So this is all, — the utmost reach, 276. 

Sound now the trumpet warningly, 512. 

Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, 
453. 

Spare me, dread angel of reproof, 441. 

Speak and tell us, ovir Ximena, looking north- 
ward far away, 35. 

Spirit of the fi-ozen North, 487. 

Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark, 426. 

Statesman, I thank thee ! and, if j^et dissent, 
332. 

Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, 4()6. 

Still in thy streets, O Paris ! doth the stain, 366. 

Still linger in our noon of time, 454. 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 407. 

Stranger and traveller, 459. 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still, 141. 

Strike home, strong-hearted man I Down to 
the root, 179. 



Sumnier's last sun nigh unto setting shines, 477. 
Sunlight upon Judtea's hills, 418. 
Sweetest of all childlike dreams, 157. 

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, 216. 
Talk not of sad November, when a day, 168. 
Tauler, the preacher, walked, one autumn day. 

44. 
Thank God for rest, where none molest, 346. 
Thank God for the token ! one lip is still free, 

275. 
Thanks for thy gift, 184. 
The age is dull and mean. Men creep, 317. 
The autunui-time has come, 406. 
The beaver cut his timber, 77. 
The Benedictine Eehard, 457. 
The birds against the April wind, 343. 
The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon 

its Southern way, 286. 
The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, 6. 
The burly driver at my side, 184. 
The cannon's brazen lips are cold, 370. 
The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken, 169. 
The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake, 431. 
The cross, if rightly borne, shall be, 192. 
The day is closing dark and cold, 36. 
The day's sharp strife is ended now, 382. 
The dreadful burden of our sins we feel, 516. 
The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown 

peaks, 475. 
The elder folks shook hands at last, 445. 
The end has come, as come it mvist, 234. 
The evil days have come, the poor, 313. 
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke, 449. 
The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse, 

333. 
The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 339. 
The fourteen centuries fall away, 437. 
The goodman sat beside his door, 15. 
The great work laid upon his twoscore years, 

203. 
The gulf of seven and fifty years, 239. 
The harp at Nature's advent strung, 261. 
The Khan came from Bokhara town, 123. 
The land, that, from the rule of kings, 240. 
The land was pale with famine, 89. 
The lowliest born of all the land, 215. 
The mercy, Eternal One, 465. 
The moon has set : while yet the dawn, 314. 
The name the Gallic exile bore, 412. 
The new world honors him whose lofty plea, 

475. 
The old Squire said, as he stood by his gate, 

12(J. 
The Pagan's myths through marble lips are 

spoken, 429. 
The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine, 220. 
The pilgrim and stranger who through the 

day, 483. 
The pines were dark on Raraoth hill, 76. 
The pleasant isle of Riigen looks the Baltio 

water o'er, 138. 
The prophet stood, 484. 
The proudest now is but my peer, 374. 
The Quaker of the olden time, 351. 
The Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin, 126, 
The Rabbi Nathan twoscore years and ten, 91. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



537 



There are streams •which are famous in his- 
tory's story, 4S5. 
The river liemmed with leaning trees, 159. 
The robins sang: in tlie orchard, the buds into 

blossoms j,'re\v, inl. 
Tlie roll of drums and the bugle's wailing, 225. 
The same old battling questions I O my friend, 

434. 
The shade for me, but over thee, 435. 
The sbadows grow and deepen round me, 463. 
The shadows roimd the inland sea, 144. 
The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth, 

1'_'8. 
The sky is ruddy in the east, oOl. 
The sonl itself its awful witness is, 461. 
The South-land bojvsts its teeming cane, 371. 
The storm and peril overpast, 35U. 
The storm-wind is howling, 482. 
The subtle jjower in perfume found, 166. 
The summer warmth has left the sky, 161. 
Tlie sunlight glitters keen and bright, 142. 
The Sims of eighteen centuries have shone, 352. 
The sun that brief December day, 399. 
The sweet spring day is glad with music, 205. 
The sword was sheathed: in April's sun, 467. 
The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails 

have spread, 379. 
The tent-lights glimmer on the land, 337. 
The threads our hands in blindness spin, 455. 
The time of gifts has come again, 159. 
The tossing spi'ay of Cocheco's fall, 131. 
The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must 

shed, 464. 
The wave is breaking on the shore, 281. 
The winding way the serpent takes, 92. 
The yeai-s are but half a score, 384. 
The years are many since his hand, 195. 
The years are many since, in youth and hope, 

93. 
The years that since we met have flown, 515. 
They hear Thee not, God ! nor see, 423. 
Tliey left their home of summer ease, 162. 
They sat in silent watchfulness, 14. 
They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, 174. 
Thine are all the gifts, O God, 235. 
Thine is a grief, the depth of which another, 

181. 
This day, two hundred years ago, 219. 
Thou dwellest not, Lord of all, 228. 
Though flowers have perished at the touch, 164. 
Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 170. 
Thrice welcoTue from the Land of Flowers, 237. 
Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East, 301. 
Through heat and cold, and shower and sun, 

3ti2. 
Through the long hall the shuttered windows 

slied, 323. 
Through the streets of Marblehead, 236. 
Through Thy clear spaces. Lord, of old, 431. 
Thv error, Fremont, simply was to act, 335. 
'T is over, Moses ! All is lost, 298. 
Tis said that in the Holy Land, 391. 
'Tis the noon of the spring-time, yet never a 

bird, 145. 
To-day the plant by Williams set, 229. 
Token of friendship, true and tried, 283. 
To kneel before some saintly shrine, 165. 



To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing 

rise to-day, 18. 
" To the winds give our banner ! 12. 
To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 425. 
Traveller ! on thy journey toiling, 7. 
Tritemius of Herbipolis, one day, 54. 
'Twas night. The tranquil moonlight smile, 

263. 
Twenty years have taken flight, 525. 
Tyi)e of two mighty continents I — combining, 

189. 

LTnder the great hill sloping bare, 124. 

Lender the shadow of a cloud, the light, 515. 

LTufathomed deep, unfetter'd waste, 486. 

Unnoted as the setting of a star, 217. 

Up and down the village streets, 67. 

\jp from tlie meadows rich with corn, 342. 

Up from the sea the wild north wind is blow- 
ing, 471). 

Up, laggards of Freedom I — our free flag is 
east, 322. 

Up the hillside, down the glen, 291. 

Up the streets of Aberdeen, 33. 

Voice of a people suffering long, 349. 

Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known, 460. 

Wake, sisters, wake ! the day-star shines, 456. 
Wave of an awful torrent, thronging down, 

50(j. 
Weary of jangling noises never stilled, 464. 
We cross the prairie as of old, 317. 
We give thy natal day to hope, 383. 
We had been wandering for manj' days, 23. 
We have opened the door, 122. 
Welcome home again, brave seaman ! with thy 

thoughtful brow and gray, 29(). 
We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the slave, 

461. 
Well speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast, 369. 
Well thought ! who would not rather hear, 

198. 
We praise not now the poet's art, 203. 
We sat together, last May -day, and talked, 

213. 
We saw the slow tides go and come, 160. 
We see not, know not ; all our way, 333.^ 
We wait beneath the furnace-blast, 334.* 
What flecks the outer gray beyond, 257. 
What shall I say, dear friends, to whom I owe, 

516. 
What shall I wish him ? Strength and health, 

51(). 
Wliat though around thee blazes, 292. 
Wlu-n first I saw our banner wave, 338. 
Wlu'ii Freedom, on her natal day, 275. 
When on my day of life the night is falling, 

46;!. 
When the breath divine is flowing, 421. 
When the reaper's task was ended, and the 

summer wearing late, (iO. 
Where are we going? where are we going, 301, 
Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines, 

231. 
Where, over heathen doom - rings and gray 

stones of the Horg, 112. 



538 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles, 247. 
Where Time the measure of his hours, 416. 
White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, 

147. 
Who gives and hides the giving hand, 456. 
Who, looking backward from his manhood's 

prime, 430. 
Who stands on that clifF, like a figure of stone, 

495. 
*' Why urge the long, unequal fight, 376. 
Wildly round our woodland quarters, 359. 
With a cold and wintry noon-light, 295. 
With a glory of winter sunshine, 215. 



With clearer light, Cross of the South, sMne 
forth, 381. 

With fifty years between you and your well- 
kept wedding vow, 231 . 

With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight. 

With v/isdom far beyond her years, 207. 

Years since (but names to me before), 206. 
Yes, let them gather ! Summon forth, 284. 
Yes, pile the marble o'er him ! It is well, 173. 
You flung your taunt across the wave, 336. 
You scarcely need my tardy thanks, 393. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Abraham Davenport, 259. 

Abrain Morrison, 413. 

Adams, Joliu Quincy, 481. 

Adjvistiiieiit, 404. 

After Election, 382. 

Album Verses, 512. 

All 's Well, 431. 

AmouK the Hills, 83. 

Amy Wentworth, 79. 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer, 439. 

Angel of Patience, The, 425. 

Angels of Buena Vista, The, 35. 

Anniversary Poem, 341. 

Answer, The, 441. 

April, 145. 

Arisen at Last, 31G. 

Artist of the Beautiful, An, 216. 

Astr^ea, 373. 

Astraea at the Capitol, 338. 

At Eventide, 409. 

At Last, 4G3. 

At Port Royal, 337. 

At School-Close, 234. 

At Washington, 295. 

Autograph, An, 413. 

Autograph, An, 515. 

Autumn Thoughts, 144. 

Banished from Massachusetts, 137. 
Barbara Frietchie, 342. 
Barclay of Ury, 33. 
Barefoot Boy, The, 396. 
Bartholdi Statue, The, 240. 
Bartlett, William Francis, 211. 
Battle Autumn of 18G2, The, 339. 
Bay of Seven Islands, The, 127. 
Benedicite, 189. 
Benevolence, 485. 
Between the Gates, 476. 
Birchbrook Mill, 133. 
Birthd.ay Wreath, The, 475. 
Bolivar, 491. 
Book, The, 4G0. 
Branded Hand, The, 296. 
Brewing of Soma, The, 449. 
Bridal of Pennacook, The, 23. 
Brother of Mercy, The, 250. 
Brown Dwarf of Rugen, The, 138. 
Brown of Ossawatomie, 201. 
Bryant on his Birthday, 203. 
Burial of Barber, 319. 
Burning Drift-Wood, 471. 
Burns, 19G. 
By their Works, 460. 

Cable Hymn, The, 256. 

Calef in Boston, 371. 

Call of the Christian, The, 417. 

Captain's Well, The, 4(^8. 

Cassandra Sonthwick, 18. 

Centennial HjTun, 234. 

Chalkley Hall, 177. 

Changeling, The, 251. 

Channing, ISO. 

Chapel of the Hermits, The, 39. 

Charity, 483. 



Chicago, 230. 

Child-Songs, 454. 

Christian Slave, The, 288. 

Christian Tourists, The, 368. 

Christmas Carmen, A, 453. 

Christmas of 1888, The, 407. 

Cities of the Plain, The, 417. 

Clear Vision, The, 447. 

Clerical Oppressors, 272. 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision, 77. 

Common Question, The, 443. 

Conductor Bradley, 117. 

Conquest of Finland, The, 377. 

Countess, The, 81. 

Crisis, The, 308. 

Cross, The, 192. 

Crucifixion, The, 418. 

Cry of a Lost Soul, The, 438. 

Curse of the Charter-Breakers, The, 306. 

Cj^press-Tree of Ceylon, The, 14. 

Day, A, 1G8. 

Day's Journey, A, 516. 

Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk, The, 122. 

Dead Ship of Harpswell, The, 257. 

Dedication of a School-house. See Our State. 

Deity, The, 484. 

Democracy, 351. 

Demon of the Study, The, 6. 

Derne, 311. 

Disarmament, 382. 

Disenthralled, The, 374. 

Divine Compassion, 448. 

Dr. Kane in Cuba, 481. 

Dole of Jarl Thorkell, The, 89. 

Double-Headed Snake of Newbury, The, 61. 

Dream of Argyle, The, 479. 

Dream of Pio Nono, The, 375. 

Dream of Summer, A, 143. 

Drovers, The, 362. 

Drunkard to his Bottle, The, 490. 

Earthquake, The, 487. 

Easter Flower Gift, An, 462. 

Ego, 388. 

" Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," 334. 

Eleanor. See My Playmate. 

Elliott, 185. 

Emancipation Group, The, 349. 

Eternal Goodness, The, 442. 

Eva, 218. 

Evening in Burmah, 508. 

Eve of Election, The, 378. 

Exile's Departure, The, 484. 

Exiles, The, 14. 

Expostulation, 267. 

Extract from " A New England Legend," 5. 

Ezekiel, 423. 

Fair Quakeress, The, 491. 

Familist's Hymn, The, 421. 

Farewell, A,".5in. 

Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, The, 278. 

Female Martyr, The, 4. 

First-Day Thoughts, 433. 

First Flowers, The, 153. 



540 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Fishermen, The, 358. 

Flowers iu Winter, 148. 

Follen. See Expostulation. 

Fallen : on Reading his Essay on " The Future State,'' 

175. 
For an Autumn Festival, 220. 
Forgiveness, 390. 
For Righteousness' Sake, 317. 
Forster, William, 195. 
Fountain, The, 7. 
Fragment, A, 516. 
Fratricide, The, 493. 
Freed Islands, The, 298. 
Freedom in Brazil, 381. 
Fremont Campaign Song, A, 512. 
Friend's Burial, The, 452. 
From Perugia, 379. 
Frost Spirit, The, 141. 
Fruit-Gift, The, 148. 
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis, 11. 

Gallows, The, 352. 

Garden, 237. 

Garibaldi, 205. 

Garrison, 350. 

Garrison of Cape Ann, The, 52. 

Gift of Tritemius, The, 54. 

Giving and Taking, 456. 

Godspeed, 238. 

Golden Wedding of Longwood, The, 231. 

Gone, 178. 

Grave by the Lake, The, 247. 

Greeting, 412. 

Greeting, A, 237. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 211. 

Hampton Beacli, 142. 

Haschish, The, 316. 

Haverhill, 473. 

Hazel Blossoms, 161. 

Healer, The, 454. 

Help, 461. 

Henchman, The, 121. 

Hermit of the Thebaid, The, 45. 

Hero, The, 192. 

Hill-Top, The, 184. 

Hive at Gettysburg, The, 348. 

Holmes, O. W., on his Eightieth Birthday, 473. 

Holy Land, The, 430. 

Home-Coming of the Bride, The, 509. 

Homestead, The, 135. 

Hooper, Lucy, 174. 

Howard at Atlanta, 348. 

How Mary Grew, 207. 

How the Robin Came, 136. 

How the Women went from Dover, 130. 

Human Sacrifice, The, 355. 

Hunters of Men, The, 270. 

Huskers, The, 3G3. 

Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipation at Newbury- 
port, 346. 

Hymn for the House of Worship at Georgetown, 228. 

Hymn for the Opening of Plymouth Church, 232. 

Hymn for the Opening of Thomas Starr King's House 
of Worship, 227. 

Hymn of the Children, 235. 

Hymn of the Dunkers, 456. 

Hymn : " O Holy Father ! just and true," 278. 

Hymn : " O Thou whose presence went before," 268. 

Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj, 4G5. 

Hymns from the French of Lamartine, 420. 

Hymn sung at Christmas by the Scholars of St. Hel- 
ena's Island, S. C, 340. 

Ichabod, 186. 
In Memory, 214. 
In Peace, 188. 



In Quest, 451. 

In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge, 199. 

In School-Days, 407. 

Inscriptions, 459. 

In the Evil Days, 313. 

In the " Old South," 121. 

Invocation, 431. 

Isabel, 494. 

Isabella of Austria, 492. 

Italy, 381. 

" I was a Stranger, and ye took me in," 233. 

John Underhill, 115. 

Jubilee Singers, The, 349. 

Judith at the Tent of Holof ernes, 488. 

June on the Merrimac, 226. 

Kallundborg Church, 255. 
Kansas Emigrants, The, 317. 
Kathleen, 37. 
Kenoza Lake, 219. 
Khan's Devil, The, 123. 
King, Thomas Starr, 203. 
King's Missive, The, 124. 
King Solomon and the Ants, 120. 
King Volmer and Elsie, 112. 
Kinsman, ^31. 

Knight of St. John, The, 17. 
Kossuth, 189. 

Lady Franklin, 482. 

Lakeside, The, 144. 

Lament, A, 1G9. 

Landmarks, The, 236. 

Last Eve of Summer, The, 477: 

Last Walk iu Autumn, The, 150. 

" Laurels, The," 226. 

Laus Deo, 345. 

Lay of Old Time, A, 218. 

Legacy, A, 415. 

Legend of St. Mark, The,-36. 

Legend of the Lake, A, 513. 

Leggett's Monument, 173. 

Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church South, in Kansas, to a Distinguished Poli- 
tician, 318. 

Letter, A, supposed to be written by the Chairman of 
the Central Clique, at Concord, N. H., 298. 

Letter to Lucy Larcom, 514. 

Lexington, 232. 

Library, The, 233. 

Light that is felt. The, 464. 

Lines. See Arisen at Last. 

Lines. See At Washington. 

Lines. See For Righteousness' Sake. 

Lines. See ]f reed Islands, The. 

Lines. See Gallows, The. 

Lines. See Lost Statesman, The. 

Lines. See My Thanks. 

Lines. See Official Piety. 

Lines. See Ritner. 

Lines. See Summons, A. 

Lines from a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend, 300. 

Lines on a Fly-Leaf, 203. 

Lines on Leaving Appledore, 515. 

Lines on the Death of S. Oliver Torrey, 170. 

Lines on the Portrait of a Celebrated Publisher, 310. 

Lines written in an Album, 516. 

Lines written in the Book of a Friend. See Ego. 

Lines, written on the Departure of Joseph Sturge, 480. 

Lost Occasion, The, 187. 

Lost Statesman, The, 304. 

Lowell, James Russell, 473. 

Lumberman, The, 359. 

Mabel Martin : A Harvest Idyl, G2. 
Maids of Attitash, The, 253. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



541 



Mantle of St. Join, de Hatha, The, 344. 


Palestine, 419. 


Marais du Cygiie, Le, 320. 


Palui-Tree, The, 155. 


Marguerite, 101. 


Panorama, The, 323. 


Martha Mason. See Ranger, The. 


Pass of the Sierra, The, 321. 


Mary Garvin, 49. 


Past and Coming Year, The, 506. 


Massachusetts, 508. 


Pastoral Letter, The, 276. 


Massacluisetts to Virginia, 286. 


Peace Autumn, Tlie, 346. 


Maud Muller, 47. 


Peace Convention at Brussels, The, 366. 


Mayflowers, The, 149. 


Peace of Europe, The, 373. 
Pennsylvania Hall, 279. 


Meeting, The, 445. 


Meeting Waters, Tlie, 483. 


Pennsylvania Pilgrim, The, 103. 


Memorial, A, 202. 


Pentucket, 8. 


Memories, SSfi. 


Pictures, 14(!. 


Memory, A. 395. 


Pine-Tree, The, 293. 


Memory of Burns, The, 199. 


Pipes at Lucknow, The, 58. 


Men of Old. The, 3(;9. 


Playmate, The. See My Playmate. 
Poet and the Children, The, 215. 


Merriraac, The, 141. 


Metacom, 4SS. 


Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham, To a, 510. 


Milton, on Memorial Window, 475. 


Poor Voter on Election Day, The, 374. 


Minister's Daughter, The, 459. 


Powers, Preston, Inscription for Bass-ReUef, 475. 


Miriam, 93. 


Prayer of Agassiz, The, 450. 


Missionary, The, 50G. 


Prayer-Seeker, Tlw, 448. 


Mithridates at Cliios, 337. 


Preacher, The, G9. 


Mogg Megone, 495. 


Prelude, The. See Greeting. 


Moloch in State Street, 314. 


Pressed Gentian, The, 159. 


Moral Warfare, The, 275. 


Prisoner for Debt, The, 367. 


Mount Agiochook, 490. 


Prisoners of Naples, The, 372. 


Mountain Pictures, 15G. 


Problem, The, 382. 


Mrs. Choate's House- Warming, 515. . 


Proclamation, The, 340. 


Mulford, 217. 


Proem, 1. 


Mv Birthday, 408. 


Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, The, 67. 


My Dream, .395. 


Pumpkin, The, 390. 


My Namesake, 393. 




My Playmate, 76. 


Quaker Alumni, The, 220. 


My Psalm, 397. 


Quaker of the Olden Time, The, 351. 


My Soul and I, 426. 


Quakers are out, The, 513. 


Mystery, A, 159. 


Questions of Life, 432. 


Mystic's Christmas, The, 462, 




My Thanks, 391. 


Rabbi Ishmael, 126. 


My Triumph, 406. 


Randolph of Roanoke, 303. 


My Trust, 411. 


Ranger, The, 51. 




Rantoul, 193. 


Name, A, 412. 


Raphael, 387. 

Red Riding-Hood, 408. 


Naples, 201. 


Nauhaught, the Deacon, 99. 


Red River Voyageur, The, 69. 


Neall, Daniel, 300. 


Reformer, The, 3G4. 


New Exodus, The, 377. 


Relic, The, 283. 


New Hampshire, 293. 


Remembrance, 392. 


New Wife and the Old, The, 21. 


Rendition, The, 315. 


New Year, The, 281. 


Requirement, 461. 


Night and Death, 482. 


Requital, 135. 


Norsemen, The, 9. 


Response, 409. 


Norembega, 92. 


Reunion, The, 239. 


Norumbega HaU, 239. 


Revelation, 465. 




Revisited, 225. 


Ocean, 486. 


Reward, The, 430. 


Official Piety, 315. 


Ritner, 275. 


Old Burying-Ground, The, 1.53. 


River Path, The, 155. 


On a Fly-Leaf of LongfeUow's Poems, 516. 


Robin, The, 102. 


On a Prayer-Book, 330. 


" Rock, The,-' in El Ghor, 435. 


One of the Signers, 240. 


Rock-Tomb of Bradore, The, 127. 


On Receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior, 144. 


R. S. S., at Deer Island on the Merrimac, 471. 


On the Big Horn, 384. 




Oriental Maxims, 461. 


Sabbath Scene, A, 312. 


Our Autocrat, 213. 


St. Gregory's Guest, 132. 


Our Country, 383. 


St. John, 12. 


Our Master, 443. 


St. Martin's Summer, 164. 


Our River, 224. 


Sea Dream, A, 160. 


Our State, 371. 


Seed-Time and Harvest, 354. 


Outdoor Reception, An, 470. 


Seeking of the Waterfall, The, 162. 


Over-Heart, Tlie, 436. 


Sentence of John L. Brown, The, 289. 


Overruled, 4.5.5. 


Sewall, Samuel E.. 516. 


Ouverture, Toussaint L', 262. 


Shadow and the Light, The, 437. 




Ship-Builders, The, 301. 


Ptean, 308. 


Shoemakers, The, 357. 


Pageant, The, 158. 


Sicilian Vesper.s, The, 4S6. 


Palatine, The, 258. 


Sigoumey, Lydia H., Inscription on Tablet, 475. 



542 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Singer, The, 206. 

Sisters, The, 100. 

Sisters, The : a Picture by Barry, 435. 

Skipper Ireson's Ride, 55. 

Slave-Ships, The, 2tS. 

Slaves of Martinique, The, 305. 

Snow-Bound, 398. 

Song for the Time, A, 322. 

Song, A, Inscribed to tlie Fremont Clubs, 323. 

Song of Harvest, A, 219. 

Song of Slaves in the Desert, 301. 

Song of the Vermonters, The, 509. 

Spirit of tlie North, The, 487. 

Spiritual Manifestation, A, 228. 

Stanzas. See Expostulation. 

Stanzas : " Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one," 

494. 
Stanzas for the Times, 271. 
Stanzas for the Times. See In the Evil Days. 
Star of Bethlehem, The, 416. 
Stearns, George L., 204. 
Storm on Lake Asquam, 165. 
" Story of Ida," The, 404. 
Summer by the Lakeside, 147. 
Summer Pilgrimage, A, 165. 
Summons, A, 272. 
Summons, Tlie, 332. 
Sumner, 208. 

Sunset on the Bearcamp, 161. 
Swan Song of Parson Avery, The, 60. 
Sweet Fern, 106. 
Sycamores, The, 56. 

Tauler, 44. 
Taylor, Bayard, 212. 
Telling the Bees, 59. 
Tent on the Beach, The, 242. 
Texas, 291. 
Thiers, 210. 
Three Bells, The, 114. 
Thy Will be Done, 333. 
Tilden, SamuelJ., 217. 

To . Lines written after a Summer Day's Excur- 
sion, 188. 

To , with a Copy of John Woolman's Journal, 171. 

To a Cape Ann Schooner, 217. 

To a Friend, 173. 

To a Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham, 510. 

To a Soutlieru Statesman, 294. 

To Avis Keene, 184. 

To Charles Sumner, 196. 

To Delaware, 301. 

ToE. C. S.,467. 

To Englishmen, 336. 

To Faneuil Hall, 292. 

To Fredrika Bremer, 183. 

To G. G., 474. 

To George B. Cheever, 198. 

To James T. Fields, 198. 

To John C. Fremont, 334. 

To J. P., 177. 

To Lucy Larcom, 514. 

To Lydia Maria Child, 205. 

To Massachusetts, 292. 

To my Friend on the Death of his Sister, 181. 

To my old Schoolmaster, 190. 

To my Sister, 391. 



To Oliver Wendell Holmes, 477. 

To Pennsylvania, 320. 

To Pius IX., 370. 

To Ronge, 179. 

To Samuel E. Sewall and Harriet W. Sewall, ! 

To the Memory of Charles B. Storrs, 170. 

To the Memory of Thomas Shipley, 274. 

To the Reformers of England, 354. 

To the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 347. 

To William H. Seward, 332. 

To William Lloyd Garrison, 262. 

Toussaint L'Ouverture, 262. 

Trailing Arbutus, The, 164. 

Trinitas, 434. 

Truce of Piscataqua, The, 74. 

Trust, 434. 

Two Angels, The, 455. 

Two Elizabeths, The, 134. 

Two Loves, The, 464. 

Two Rabbins, The, 91. 

Utterance, 461. 

Vale of the Merrimac, The, 485. 

Valuation, 126. 

Vanishers, The, 157. 

Vaudois Teacher, The, 3. 

Vermonters, Song of the, 509. 

Vesta, 454. 

Vision of Echard, The, 457. 

Voices, The, 376. 

Vow of Wasliington, The, 467. 

Voyage of the Jettie, 410. 

Waiting, The, 398. 

Watchers, The, 335. 

Wedding Veil, The, 483. 

Welcome to Lowell, A, 216. 

Well of Loch Maree, The, 39. 

What of the Day, 322. 

What State Street said, 512. 

What the Birds said, 343. 

What the Traveller said at Sunset, 463. 

What the Voice said, 424. 

Wheeler, Daniel, 182. 

Wife of Manoah to her Husband, The, 425. 

Wife, The. See Among the Hills. 

Wilson, 215. 

Wind of March, The, 476. 

Winter Roses, 238. 

Wishing Bridge, The, 130. 

Wish of To-Day, The, 431. 

Witch of Wenham, The, 117. 

Witch's Daughter, The. See Mabel Martin. 

Within the Gate, 213. 

Woman, A, 450. 

Wood Giant, The, 167. 

Word, The, 400. 

Word for the Hour, A, 333. 

Wordsworth, 188. 

World's Convention, The, 284. 

Worship, 429. 

Worsliip of Nature, The, 261. 

Wreck of Rivermouth, The, 24B. 

Yankee Girl, The, 269. 
Yorktown, 302. 



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